Code Club Resources

Get ready to code: This is our Code Club!

We’re kicking off a new season of coding fun with three new ‘This is our Code Club’ projects for registered Code Clubs that are all about creativity and storytelling. Get ready to bring your club’s story to life through code!

Two young girls engaged in a coding activity, smiling and collaborating while working on laptops, with a colorful 'This is our Code Club' graphic in the background.

These three new exclusive projects are designed to help creators bring their Code Club’s story to life. The best part? When you share your finished projects with us, you’ll get a special sticker pack, including brand new glitter stickers! You have until Friday, 24 October to share your projects with us.

For registered Code Clubs, full details can be found in your inbox. Search for “This is our Code Club”. Not a Code Club? Register today to unlock access to these exclusive projects!

Let’s explore the projects and how you can use them in your Code Club.

Our flatgame | Scratch

Our flatgame is a one-of-a-kind project that mixes video games with poetry! These games are simple — creators can quickly make a full game and focus on their ideas instead of complicated game mechanics.

Young people start by creating their own physical assets — sketches, drawings, or even cut-outs of things they love about their Code Club. Next, they’ll use Scratch to build a simple scrolling game where a player moves around their amazing creations. It’s a fantastic way to turn your ideas and artwork into a playable game.

An illustration showing hands pointing at a digital tablet displaying a green circular shape, surrounded by colorful craft materials and the text 'This is our Code Club — Our flatgame'.

Tips to get started 

  • Creators can work together and share photos. One person could focus on the text and storytelling while another handles the visuals.
  • Break the project into multiple sessions. The first session could be all about discovery and idea generation, including writing stories, drawing, and taking photos. The second session would then be for building the game in Scratch.
  • You could take the photos and upload them as new sprites in a starter project for each group. Creators can then remix the project, duplicate the sprite with all the pictures, and choose the ones they want to use.

What creators will learn

This project is about creativity and self-expression. Creators will learn the workflow of video game design and asset creation, and get to use Scratch to add movement, text, and sound effects.

Our beat | micro:bit

Ready to get musical? Our beat is a hands-on digital music project where you’ll build and code your very own Code Club theme tune! Using the BBC micro:bit and the MakeCode editor, you’ll create melodies, bass lines, and drum loops.

You can start with our unplugged warm-up activity to explore rhythms and sequences without a screen, then use the MakeCode simulator to test out your tunes before bringing them to life on a real micro:bit.

Illustration promoting the 'This is our Code Club - Our podcast' project, featuring a character playing drums, with musical notes and a BBC micro:bit in the background.

Tips to get started

  • Use the MakeCode simulator first to get creators to test and refine their tunes. This is especially helpful if you don’t have enough micro:bits for everyone.
  • Encourage pair programming: one person can write the code while the other suggests melodies or tests the playback. Make sure they swap roles so everyone gets a chance to try both coding and creating music.
  • Begin with a simple melody on one micro:bit, then add more features like play and pause buttons. This progression is built into the project, but managing creators’ expectations will help them see their music evolve instead of trying to do everything at once.

What creators will learn

This project is a great introduction to programming concepts like sequences, loops, variables, and conditional statements. Creators will also explore how radio communication works between devices and learn real-world debugging and problem-solving skills.

Our podcast | AI

Let’s make your club podcast stars! Turn your unique stories into a show that celebrates everything that makes your Code Club special. Play the Scriptville example podcast to get everyone excited and to give them a feel for what they’ll be creating.

Illustration of two children recording a podcast in a colorful setting. One child wears headphones and sits at a computer, while the other raises a hand in excitement. A microphone and sound wave graphics complement the scene.

Tips to get started

  • Start by introducing the concept of podcasts and asking creators what they listen to or if they’ve ever made one.
  • This is a collaborative project. Everyone’s voice will contribute to the final podcast, so there’s no pressure on one person.
  • Encourage them to write about their experiences. Stories about things that have happened in the club make for great listening! They can use the writing prompts to help, and remind them to use only first names in the podcast.

What creators will learn

Creators will learn to work with artificial intelligence (AI) tools and see their potential in new and different ways. By creating and sharing their own podcast, they’ll bring their stories to life and experience the process of collaborative creation, where their individual contributions come together to form a shared outcome. They will work with plain text files, workflows, and organising files, and have experience with digital publishing.

For registered Code Clubs, full details can be found in your inbox. Search for “This is our Code Club”. Not a Code Club? Register today to unlock access to these exclusive projects!

Ready to start creating? Explore the ‘This is our Code Club’ projects and showcase your Code Club story for the rest of the world! We can’t wait to see your projects.

Bring Scratch sprites to life in your Code Club!

If you’ve ever helped a Code Club creator bring a Scratch project to life in your club, you’ve definitely worked with sprites. But what exactly is a sprite — and how can they become a key tool for creativity, storytelling, and problem-solving in your club?

Discover what makes sprites so special, and how Code Club creators can use them to spark their imaginations and build their confidence in coding.

A mentor and a young student are engaged in a coding activity at Code Club, with both smiling and working together on a laptop, showcasing collaboration and creativity.
Exploring Scratch

What is a Scratch sprite?

In the block-based programming language Scratch, a sprite is any object or character that can be programmed. It could be a cat, a robot, a spaceship, or even something abstract like a button or a speech bubble. Sprites can move, talk, change appearance, make sounds, and interact with other sprites.

Each sprite has:

  • Costumes — different appearances or frames, perfect for animations or storytelling
  • Scripts — the blocks of code that control what the sprite does
  • Sounds — effects or voice clips that bring the sprite to life

How sprites work in projects

Sprites are a very important creative element in a Scratch project. In games, they might be the player character, the enemy, or a moving obstacle. In animations or stories, they become the characters that talk, dance, or react. And in interactive projects, they can act as buttons or score counters.

Sprites can respond to:

  • Keyboard presses (e.g. arrow keys to move)
  • Mouse clicks or movements
  • Broadcast messages from other sprites
  • Changes in variables (like a score or timer)

With just a few blocks, creators can program sprites to jump, spin, teleport, or even have a full-on conversation.

Two individuals smiling, one holding a laptop displaying a Scratch project, and the other holding a circular sign that reads 'We made this.'
Cambridge Make Space Code Club

Creative ways to use sprites in your Code Club

“Sprites are wicked! What the kids see is a way to express their creativity and individuality, and get them to do things and interact with other sprites or the environment around them. What I see is a surreptitious method of teaching them object-oriented programming without them even noticing. Each sprite (object) has its own code (class) and interactions (methods). The ‘Boat race’ has always been our Code Club’s favourite Scratch project, year after year.”

Marcus, Code Club mentor, Wales

Here are four fun and imaginative ways to get your creators to think creatively about how they can use sprites within Code Club projects. 

1. Remix and personalise 

Encourage learners to personalise their projects by choosing their own sprites. Two projects that are great for this are Find the bug and Space talk. Creators can pick from a range of sprites to make the scenarios their own, or even create their own sprite — either by drawing or using their own photos! 

An illustration depicting a magnifying glass, a stylized cartoon bug, and various question marks against a pink background, symbolizing discovery and problem-solving in coding.
Find the bug

2. Create your own

Using the built-in paint editor, creators can draw their own sprites. They can go wherever their imagination takes them, perhaps creating avatars that look like themselves, or entirely new characters. This is great for storytelling!   

You can also encourage creators to draw new faces with our Stress ball project or get creative with Music maker, where they can create new sprites that play music. 

A cheerful cartoon character with an orange body and playful facial features, displaying a thumbs-up gesture against a wavy teal background with lightning shapes.
Stress ball

3. Bring stories to life with costumes

Sprites can have different costumes, which creators can animate — this can be a great way to show emotions or story progression in a project. To develop their animation skills, creators could explore Rock band and animate the drumsticks hitting the drum, or Grow a dragonfly, where they can use a costume to make a dragonfly’s wings move.

A colorful illustration of a purple dragonfly with white wings, flying near several small black and white flies against a turquoise background.
Grow a dragonfly project

4. Sound effects and voiceovers

Adding voices or sound effects can turn a simple sprite into a fully-formed character. Whether it’s a robot beep or a voice recorded in session (don’t forget to pack headphones for when everyone tests their projects!), audio can really help creators connect with what they’ve made.

The Sprint! project is great for experimenting with audio — your creators could add running noises, or change the congratulatory cheer at the end. Another nice project for audio creativity is Broadcasting spells, where creators can add sounds to sprites that turn into toads, and then make noises as they grow and shrink!

A cartoon-style green frog sprite with large eyes and a surprised expression, set against a vibrant red background, while a magic wand points towards it.
Broadcasting spells

Tips for supporting creativity with sprites

Encourage exploration and let creators spend time browsing the sprite library or drawing their own sprites. This might get messy, but they will learn what they can do with a sprite and how they can make it their own.

Ask open-ended questions when you are talking to creators about how they can expand their project. Try “What else could this sprite do?” or “Can you make your sprite react to the player?”

Leave time for a ‘show and tell’ at the end of a session — this provides the perfect space for creators to explain what their sprite does and why they made it that way. You’ll often be amazed by the thought and creativity behind their choices.

“The Code Club engaging projects have fostered much interest and excitement with the creators when they see and hear the sprites’ interactions. Creators discover really fulfilling moments as they place coding blocks into order and watch their work come to life.”

Mahendren Reddy — IT Teacher at ML Sultan Primary School, South Africa

Learn to code and bring sprites alive! Discover animation, storytelling, and game design with our Scratch Code Club projects. 

Girl holds a laptop showing a coding project while smiling woman beside her holds a sign reading “we made this”.

“We made this!” Discovering the power of agency in your Code Club

Explore how empowering young people to choose their projects, topics, or programming languages can lead to more engaged Code Club creators who believe their actions make a real difference.

Girl holds a laptop showing a coding project while smiling woman beside her holds a sign reading “we made this”.
Choose from hundreds of Code Club projects, in up to 30 languages

What do we mean by ‘agency’?

At Code Club, giving young people agency means fostering a culture where creators are driven and self-motivated to direct their own growth through their passion for coding.

What are the advantages?

By giving creators agency, you’ll create a more meaningful learning experience. If you allow your creators to work on ideas they care about, their curiosity becomes the foundation for them to develop their coding skills.

We want creators to feel empowered at Code Club and to open up opportunities for them to feel that their voice and their actions can make a difference. This is one way to encourage them to become more engaged and confident. But giving your creators agency doesn’t mean giving up control entirely; help from mentors is essential to getting your creators started in these steps towards independence. Of course, they will also need your guidance and feedback to make lasting progress.

“You can see on their faces when they are creating something from zero that they feel like magicians. They start to create their own things because we have given them the tutorials to follow the steps; they create new things and bring their own projects and new ideas to us!”
– Iliana Ramirez, Code Club Partner, Mexico City

Two children smile while working together at laptops in a busy Code Club.
Use our projects to create games, animations, and much more

So, how can you give your creators agency?

Adding choice to your Code Club sessions can be really simple. Creators volunteer to come to Code Club, and so they have already made their first decision: to follow one of their interests. Once they have arrived, there is no right way to learn to code, so each creator can discover their own path.

Here are three easy ways you could help your creators take ownership of their learning journey at your next session:

1. Projects

Try offering three project ideas and letting creators team up to work on the one they each like best. You could also let creators choose any project they like from our project site.

Offer your creators a thrilling change of pace with these three projects:

Silly Eyes

‘Silly eyes’ is a Scratch project that gives creators the freedom to create their own silly eyes character. The character’s large, silly eyes will follow the mouse pointer and bring the character to life.

Teach a machine

‘Teach a machine’ is part of our AI toolkit path. Creators use a webcam and machine learning to train a computer to tell them how many fingers they are holding up.

Music Player

Get ready to play and share all the best tunes on the BBC micro:bit with ‘Music Player’. Your creators don’t even need the physical micro:bit to try this one.

We have over 200 coding projects to choose from, and each supports creators to learn at their own pace and grow their confidence.

2. Topic or theme

Why not challenge your creators to agree on a theme for the next Code Club session and create projects that link to the topic? Mentors can then encourage them to share how their projects link to the theme at the end of the session and vote on the next theme together. 

A topic can be anything that your creators are interested in, such as animals, a favourite sport, or a seasonal festival. 
You can link our projects to any topic with a bit of imagination. A volcano theme might lead to adapting Boat Race to create a game where you can’t touch the lava. You will find that your creators have lots of ideas!

3. Computing language

Give your creators a choice of which computing language they use through our project paths. Each path is a collection of six projects that cover a set of skills needed for a particular piece of hardware or software alongside design and engineering skills. 

Provide your creators with the information they need to make a choice from a number of different project paths and let them explore the ones that interest them the most.

It is important that creators start at the ‘Introduction to…’ level if they are new to the software or hardware being covered.

Explore the Code Club projects

Start exploring the Code Club projects site and give your creators the agency to make projects they care about at your next Code Club session.