It’s no secret that young people have incredible imaginations; we see it all the time at Code Clubs. Often, their greatest inspirations come from the things they love most — like animals!
Cats were everywhere at Coolest Projects UK in Bradford! Young people showed us their purr-fect pals, reminding us how important cats and pets are for inspiring creators, and how personal interests fuel creativity and learning within Code Clubs.
Coolest Projects UK in Bradford
This all reinforced a core principle of Code Club: by giving creators agency, you’ll create a more meaningful learning experience. Learn more about the power of agency in our past blog post — it shares tips on helping creators work on ideas they care about.
“Making Code Club projects culturally relevant and responsive, that is, linked to what creators are interested in and passionate about, brings a whole new dimension to them. Levels of perseverance, collaboration, creativity, and pride reach new heights as creators realise they CAN achieve what they want to. And one of my favourite quotes from Coolest Projects was ‘I never knew computing could be so creative and so much fun!”
Rachael, Code Club mentor, St Nicholas Church of England Primary School and Nursery
Feline fun from Coolest Projects UK
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for — hot from Coolest Projects UK, an un-fur-gettable collection of cat projects we think you’ll enjoy as much as we did!
Explore animal-themed projects at your club
We’ve chosen three animal-themed projects for your Code Club to try. The projects allow creators to develop their coding skills while exploring their creativity and bringing their favourite animals to life on screen.
1. Cats! | Scratch Creators code a Scratch game where their mission is to guide cats to safety and not let any of them fall through the gaps!
2.Build a webpage | HTML/CSS and web browser Do you know a creator who’s totally into animals? This project guides them through building a cool webpage, where they can show off their favourite animal or a pet.
3. Fish food | AI Encourage creators to personalise this project by taking a photo of their pet fish to use in the game. After that, they’ll train the project’s machine learning model to understand voice commands to control their fish.
To find more animal-themed projects, head to our projects page and select ‘Animals’ from the topic drop-down menu.
We’re sharing insights from the incredible mentors who guide and inspire young coders. It’s their unique perspectives and the positive learning environments they foster that truly make these clubs thrive and help our global community grow.
Meet Chris, a passionate mentor involved with Normandale Hills Code Club in Bloomington, Minnesota, who’s building an environment where coders develop their problem-solving skills, normalise failure, and explore their creativity.
Let’s kick things off by asking:
What inspired you to become a Code Club mentor?
Volunteering gave me a great excuse to lean into my computer engineering background and do something fun with my kids, who are fifth and third graders. It’s been a blast helping them and all the other kids learn more about computer science while bringing in some real-world perspectives and industry terms (like rubber duck debugging and pair programming).
What makes Code Club projects engaging for the young people in your club?
Our club did a number of simple projects to start using the micro:bits — things like creating a name badge, making pedometers, and playing the ‘Hot Potato’ game — but what really brought out the imagination and creativity of the kids was challenging them to design a game of their own.
We brought in real-world concepts like project briefs to get them to think critically about what they wanted to build and how they wanted to approach it. Ideas ranged from simplified versions of FIFA and Madden to variations of existing party games.
There were several moments where you could see it visibly click for one of the kids — when they realised they were not constrained by the step-by-step tutorial into building a specific thing, but had the freedom to create whatever they could dream up… which was quickly followed up by the slight fear in realising the challenge they were in for!
How are Code Club projects helping to ignite excitement, creativity, or lively discussion with creators?
It’s fun to see how all the different projects inspire certain kids — some have been more excited by the more visual projects, while others get joy from customising and making a project their own.
When they were given their first option to build something of their own design, there were LOTS of questions. They ranged from trying to understand the guardrails to questioning how they were ever going to know how to code it.
Our challenge to them was to just get started! We encouraged the kids to start writing code and test it when it was small, then write a little more and test it a little more. The emphasis was on letting the code come together iteratively, and tackling challenges as they came up instead of trying to anticipate all of them ahead of time.
What impact do you believe Code Club projects have on creators’ understanding of coding concepts?
One of the biggest benefits I see is normalising failure — even if following a tutorial, most kids make at least one mistake the first time doing a coding project. And that’s okay!
Debugging code is a normal part of the development process, and that makes it safer for the creators to experiment, mess up, and learn along the way. My hope is that the willingness to try (and sometimes fail!) will extend into other parts of their lives and inspire them to take more risks than they may have otherwise.
How does your Code Club empower young coders to develop a sense of independence?
As the club has gone on, our young people have been given projects with less and less guidance, moving on from step-by-step tutorials to projects where they define their own problems.
We frequently talk about the creative side of coding — how you, the coder, get to decide how to solve a problem. Your code may not look exactly like your neighbour’s. There is no one ‘right’ answer. Giving the kids the freedom to solve the problem in their own way builds a deeper sense of ownership of the solution than having everyone learning to do things exactly the same.
We also give kids the opportunity to pair and partner with others, and put their collective brainpower to work on tackling a problem. This helps them learn alternative perspectives and broadens their understanding.
Has Chris’ story inspired you to make an impact? Join our community of passionate mentors! With active Code Clubs in over 100 countries, there’s a place for you. Ready to get started? Check out our Mentor at a Code Club page.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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