Is it free to make an animation in Scratch?

Yes, completely free. Scratch is a non-profit project from the MIT Media Lab, and creating an account, building projects, and sharing them costs nothing. No software installation is needed either: everything runs directly in the browser at scratch.mit.edu, on a computer or tablet with a keyboard. That makes it accessible to any family without buying software or special equipment. The only real investment is time: a first short animation comes together in 20-30 minutes.

How many blocks does a first animation need?

6 to 8 blocks already build a complete animation: a start event, a costume change or movement, and one or two dialogue blocks. Many kids try to use twenty or thirty blocks on the first attempt and end up lost among too many pieces. A short, well-finished animation teaches more than a long one that never gets completed. Once the basics are mastered, adding more scenes and characters is just a matter of repeating the same pattern.

Why doesn't my character move when I click the green flag?

The most common cause is that the **when green flag clicked** block isn't connected to the rest of the blocks — in Scratch, if pieces aren't physically snapped together, they don't run together. Another frequent cause is that the wrong sprite is selected in the left panel while building blocks: each character has its own separate set of blocks. Checking that the blocks are snapped together like puzzle pieces and that the correct sprite is selected resolves most of these cases.

Can you make a Scratch animation from a tablet?

Yes, Scratch works on tablets with a connected keyboard and mouse or trackpad, though the experience is more comfortable on a computer given the screen size. For younger kids (ages 5-7), ScratchJr is an app designed specifically for tablets, with an even simpler interface built for fingers instead of a mouse. From around age 7-8, most kids handle the full Scratch version on a tablet with a keyboard just fine.

How long should a first animation project be?

10 to 20 seconds is a good target for a first project — enough for a scene with a beginning, middle, and end, without getting so long that interest fades. Kids who attempt multi-minute animations from the start often give up before finishing, simply because the project becomes hard to organize. Once a first short project is done, extending it with more scenes is far easier than starting big from the outset.

Coding Education

5 min read

How to Make an Animation in Scratch — A Kids' Step-by-Step Guide

Q: What's the difference between a game and an animation in Scratch?

A game responds to what the player does — keys, clicks — and usually has scoring or win/lose conditions. An animation follows a fixed sequence from start to finish, with no one controlling it while it runs. Many kids start with animations because they're simpler to plan: there's no need to think through every possible player decision, just a story with a fixed order. Once animation is mastered, adding interactivity (letting the player control something) is the natural next step.

Published: 03.08.2026·Updated: 03.08.2026

Neftalí Cázares

Senior Coding Instructor

How to Make an Animation in Scratch — A Kids' Step-by-Step Guide

Your child already knows how to move a sprite in Scratch, and now they want that character to tell a story, not just slide back and forth. That's exactly the difference between a game and an animation: in an animation, blocks create a sequence of actions with a beginning and an end.

This guide covers five steps to build a short Scratch animation, from picking a character and backdrop to sharing it. Written so a 7 to 12 year old can follow it alone, with the parts kids get stuck on explained first.

What Is Scratch?

Scratch is a free block-based programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab and released publicly in 2007, used by children to build animations, games and interactive stories. It came from the Lifelong Kindergarten research group led by Mitchel Resnick, and it now has more than 90 million registered users worldwide. The characters being animated are called sprites, and each sprite can hold several costumes, which is what creates the illusion of movement.

What's Needed Before Starting

A free account at scratch.mit.edu. Nothing to install, because Scratch runs directly in the browser, on a computer or tablet with a keyboard.
No prior coding knowledge. Scratch uses blocks that snap together like puzzle pieces rather than text, so the first project gets built without ever seeing a line of code.
A calm 20 to 30 minute stretch. Enough to finish a short animation start to finish in one sitting.

Five Steps to a First Animation

1. Pick a character and a backdrop

At scratch.mit.edu, start a new project. Click the cat icon (Choose a Sprite) to pick a character from the library, and the landscape icon (Choose a Backdrop) for the background. Any combination works for a first try.

2. Animate basic movement

Drag the when green flag clicked block into the scripts area, then snap forever underneath it. Inside the forever loop, add next costume and wait 0.2 seconds. If the character has multiple costumes, this alone creates a basic walking or blinking animation.

3. Add dialogue with say blocks

Use the say [text] for 2 seconds block to make the character talk. Chaining two or three say blocks in a row already builds a short scene with a beginning and an end — the key difference between "something that moves" and "a story."

4. Combine movement and scene

Use glide to x:_ y:_ in 1 second so the character crosses the screen while talking. Combining movement + dialogue + costume change in the same sequence is what makes an animation feel alive instead of static.

5. Test and share

Click the green flag to watch the full animation. If something feels off — the character talks too fast, or the movement looks jumpy — adjust the seconds in each block until it feels natural. Then

Three Common Beginner Mistakes

1. Using too many costumes or scenes at once. A first animation with ten backdrop changes and five characters almost always stalls halfway. Two or three well-chained blocks tell a complete story.

2. Forgetting the "wait" block. Without a pause between actions, everything happens in a split second and the dialogue or movement never registers. It's the most common fix needed the first time around.

3. Not testing along the way. Building all ten blocks and pressing play only at the end makes it harder to find what's broken. Testing after every two or three new blocks saves time and frustration.

What Age Can a Child Start?

Around 7 to 9 years old for simple animations with the standard Scratch interface, since by that age a child can read the blocks and follow a short sequence of steps. From ages 5 to 7 there is ScratchJr, an even simpler tablet version released in 2014 by Tufts University together with MIT, whose blocks use pictures instead of words. Both versions come from the same MIT Media Lab project that Mitchel Resnick's group launched in 2007.

If Your Child Gets Stuck

Some kids move forward on their own, testing blocks out of curiosity. Others get stuck at step three or four, unsure why the character isn't saying what it should or moves at the wrong moment.

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How to Make an Animation in Scratch — A Kids' Step-by-Step Guide

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