How to make snow fall in Scratch

Just by making a few small adjustments in the programming code, you can draw one or more snowflakes of different sizes in Scratch. Here it is Instructions for creating snowfall when using Scratch programming.

Create a falling snow effect in Scratch is a fun and magical way to learn animation and programming. Whether you’re creating a winter scene, a Christmas card, or a snow game, adding a falling snow effect will instantly make your project look more beautiful and vibrant.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn exactly how to make snowflakes fall smoothly — using loops, copies, and random placement. Even beginners can follow along!

⛄ What will you learn?

After completing this tutorial, you will understand how to:

Create a snowflake sprite
Make snowflakes fall from the top of the screen
Use random placement to create a natural falling snow effect
Duplicate snowflakes to create a continuous falling effect
Add effects like resizing or speed

Table of Contents

Step-by-step instructions for creating a falling snow effect using Scratch

1. Create a new project and add a backdrop

The first step is to create a new project. Open Scratch and click Create to create a new project. Delete the default cat image and then select the appropriate background by clicking the button Choose a Backdrop in the lower right corner (shown in green in the image above).

2. Add snowflake sprite

Add Snowflake Sprite

After selecting the backdrop, now click Choose a Sprite in the bottom right corner, find snowflakethen click on the corresponding result. When the snowflake sprite is successfully created, it will be very large and you need to resize it in step 4.

3. Create a copy of the snowflake

Click the green flag

There is currently only one snowflake in the project. However, to create snowfall, you need countless snowflakes! Instead of manually loading hundreds of snowflakes, there is a smarter method. Scratch has a function called “clone” (cloning) will create copies of the snowflake image. Let’s analyze the above code:

When “green flag” clicked: This code block will cause the code blocks below to run when the green flag is clicked.
Hide: Without this hidden block, the initial snowflake would be stationary in the middle of the project. By hiding it, you can still duplicate it, even though it’s not visible.
Forever: This creates a snowfall loop that will run forever.
Wait 0.1 second: This command block controls how often a new snowflake appears on the screen. The value 0.1 can be increased or decreased to control the snowfall rate; A value of 0 will produce very heavy snowfall, while a value of 1 will produce light snowfall.
Create a clone of myself: This block of commands tells the program to create a copy of the original snowflake.

You can freely adjust the value in the “wait” block to suit your personal needs.

4. Control snowflake activity

Control snowflake activity

At this point, you have created code that can copy the original snowflake infinitely. Now, you need to control what happens to the new snowflake copies. Let’s analyze the above code:

When I started as a clone: This command block ensures that subsequent command blocks will be executed each time a new copy is created.
Set size to (pick randomly 5 to 20) %: This block of code ensures that, every time a snowflake copy is created, its size will be between 5% and 20% of the size of the original snowflake. This block of code also solves the problem of snowflakes being too large. If you want the size difference between the snowflakes to be larger or smaller, you can arbitrarily change these values as desired.
Set x value to (pick random -240 to 240): The placement of sprites on the Scratch canvas is controlled by an invisible grid, and you can place them around the grid by assigning them x values and y values. The x value controls the position from left to right, and the y value controls the position from top to bottom. The x value can range from -240 to 240; The closer it is to -240, the more it skews to the left, and the closer it gets to 240, the more it skews to the right. The y value ranges from -180 to 180, with -180 at the bottom of the screen and 180 at the top. In short, this code will randomly select and store an x value located somewhere between the left and right sides of the screen.
Go to x: x value y: 180: This code moves the snowflake copy to the appropriate location. The x value was determined in the previous step, and the y value was set to 180 so that the snowflake appeared at the top of the screen.
Show: In the previous code, the original snowflake was made invisible using the “hide” command block. If you want the new snowflake copies to show, you will have to make them appear using the “show” command block.
Glide (pick random 3 to 7) secs to x: x value y: -265: The sliding block will make our snowflakes slide across the screen to a specified position. To make the snowflakes look more realistic, the example placed a random selection block inside the sliding block to ensure that not all snowflakes fall at the same speed. With some snowflakes, they will take 3 seconds to fall, while with others, it will take 4, 5, 6, or 7 seconds. Since the snowflakes will fall straight down, you can use the same x value as before. You can change the y value depending on how deep you want the snowflakes to fall.
Wait 15 seconds: To create the effect as if the snowflakes are clinging to the ground, leave them there for 15 seconds before disappearing. You can omit this command block if you don’t want the snowflake to stick to the ground, or you can increase the value to make the snowflake stay longer. However, be careful not to set the value too high, otherwise too many snowflakes may appear on the screen at once and your program may crash!
Delete this clone: As mentioned in the previous explanation, if too many snowflakes appear on the screen at the same time, the program may crash. This code will delete snowflakes to make space for new snowflakes to appear.