How to Make Snow Fall From Scratch: Snowflakes Galore

As winter approaches, you may be interested in creating a winter-themed project in Scratch. But, of course, no winter project would be complete without snowfall! In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create falling snow in Scratch that will spice up any project. Let’s start coding!

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How to Make Snow Fall in Scratch Coding

Making snow fall in Scratch is a fun programming activity that will enhance any project you’re working on. Follow along to learn how to make falling snow in Scratch! This is the project we will create. You can also watch our video tutorial if you want.

1. Create a New Project and Add a Background

The first step of course is to create a new project. Navigate to Scratch and click “Create” to create a new project. Delete the cat sprite that will load by default and then select a suitable background by clicking the “Choose Background” button in the bottom right corner (shown in green in the image above).

2. Add Snow Sprites

Once you’ve chosen your background, the next step is to add the snowflake sprite. Click the “Select Sprite” button at the bottom right, search for “snowflake,” and click the snowflake sprite that appears. When the snowflake sprite is loaded, it will be very large; we’ll fix that in step 4!

3. Create a Snowflake Clone

Currently, we only have one snowflake in our project. However, to create snowfall, we need an unlimited number of snowflakes! Instead of loading hundreds of snowflakes manually, there is a smarter method. Scratch has a function called “clone” that will create a copy of our snowflake sprite. Take a look at the code above; let’s dive into what each coding block accomplishes.

• When the “green flag” is clicked: This block will cause the block below it to run when the green flag is clicked.
• Hide: While we want our original snowflake sprite to exist so it can be cloned; we don’t actually want it to be visible. Without this hiding block, our original snowflake would stop in the middle of our project. By hiding it, we can still clone it, but it won’t be visible.
• Forever: This creates a loop that will run forever. This suited our needs, as we wanted it to snow forever (or, at least until the stop sign was clicked to end the program).
• Wait .1 seconds: This block controls how often new snowflakes appear on the screen. That .1 the value can be increased or decreased to control the snowfall rate; a value of 0 will cause very heavy snowfall, while a value of 1 will cause occasional snowfall.
• Create a clone of myself: This block tells the program to create a copy of the original snowflake.

Once you feel comfortable and understand this code, go ahead and add it to your own project, adjusting the values ​​in the “wait” block to suit your needs.

4. Control Snowflake Behavior

At this point, we have created code that will clone our original snowflake indefinitely. Now, we need to control what happens with this new snowflake clone. Let’s analyze the above code to know how it works.

• When I start as a clone: ​​This block makes the following blocks run every time a new clone is created.
• Set size to (randomly choose 5 to 20) %: In real life, snowflakes are not all the same size. Our program will look more realistic if we code a slight change in the size of the snowflake. This block means that every time a snowflake clone is created, its size will be between 5%-20% of the size of the original snowflake. This block also solves the problem of very large snowflake sizes. If you want a larger or smaller variation in the size of the snowflakes, you can change these values ​​as desired.
• Set the x value to (choose randomly -240 to 240): The placement of sprites on the Scratch canvas is controlled by an invisible grid, and you can place objects around the grid by giving them x values ​​and ay values. The x value controls left to right placement, and the y value controls top and bottom placement. The X value can range from -240 to 240; the closer to -240, the further to the left, and the closer to 240, the further to the right. The Y value ranges from -180 to 180, with -180 at the bottom of the screen and 180 at the top. Overall, this block of code randomly selects and stores x values ​​that fall between the left and right of the screen.
• Go to x:x value y:180: This code block moves our snowflake clone to the appropriate location. The x value was determined in the previous step, and the y value is set to 180 so that the snowflake will appear at the top of the screen.
• Show: As you remember, in the previous code we created, we made our original snowflake invisible with a “hide” block. If we want our new snowflake clone to be visible, we need to make it appear with the “show” block.
• Glide (choose at random 3 to 7) second to x: xy value: -265: Glide blocks will make our snowflakes slide across the screen to a specific location. To make the snowflakes look more realistic, we have placed random blocks inside the sliding blocks to ensure that not every snowflake will fall at the same speed. For some people, it takes 3 seconds to fall, while for others, it takes 4, 5, 6, or 7 seconds. Since our snowflake will fall straight down, we can use the same x value as before. You can change the y value depending on how far you want the snowflakes to fall, but we found -265 works well.
• Wait 15 seconds: To make the snowflake look like it’s stuck to the ground, we let it sit there for 15 seconds before it disappears. You can remove this block if you don’t want the snowflakes to stick, or you can increase the value to make the snowflakes last longer. But be careful not to set the value too high, otherwise too many snowflakes will appear on the screen at once and your program may crash!
• Remove this clone: ​​As we mentioned in the previous explanation, if there are too many snowflakes on the screen at once, your program may crash. This code block deletes snowflakes to make room for new snowflakes to appear.

There are a lot of blocks to this part of the program, so it’s okay if you don’t understand every detail. However, hopefully you have a general understanding of how this program works. Once you are comfortable with this code, go ahead and add it to your program.

5. Hide the X Value Variable

If you notice, our program displays the x value variable in the top left corner. You can eliminate the display of this variable by entering the code above.

Enjoy!

If you’ve followed along up to this point, you should already have all of the above code in your program, and you should see it snowing when you click the green flag. Now that the snow has fallen, you can customize your program further. Maybe an animated snowman or reindeer would be a nice addition!

Making Snow Fall in Scratch Coding

We hope you enjoy this tutorial and that you can add falling snowflakes to your Scratch projects. If you’re ready for more Scratch tutorials, check out How to Make a Game with Levels in Scratch. If your students want to take a Scratch class with a live teacher and other students to get all their questions answered and follow a learning path designed for their age and fun, check out our amazing Scratch courses for kids. They can even get a certificate. Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

Written by Matt Schofield, an educator and avid coder. After studying Spanish at the University of Pennsylvania, Matt began teaching English as a second language to elementary school students in Baltimore. In addition to his full-time teaching position, Matt enjoys teaching computer science in the evenings and weekends with Create & Learn.