Free Scratch Coding for Kids: Valentine’s Day Card Scratcher Activity

Valentine’s Day is a time to bring smiles to that special loved one. This year, you can set hearts aflutter with a handmade, hand-coded card. You will save the trees and spread the love.

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Follow this easy Scratch coding tutorial to build a Valentine’s Day scratcher that reveals a personalized card.

What is Scratch? Scratch is a 100% free block-based programming language and it’s one of our favorites. Developed by the minds at MIT, the Scratch platform lets you drag and drop code blocks to build fun games and apps. Scratch is a great way to introduce younger students to coding and how to think like a programmer.

Try our Valentine’s Day Card Scratcher. Scratch off a heart to reveal a very special Valentine’s message.

Table of Contents

Step 1: Create a new Scratch project
Step 2: Upload game board and card images
X, Y positioning in Scratch
Step 3: Position hearts and scratcher sprite
Step 4: Add a wand to scratch with
Step 5: Wave your wand
Step 6: Create the scratched heart effect
Step 7: Add scratcher logic
Step 8: Reveal your Valentine’s card
Step 9: Show the game board when we restart
Step 10: Add more scratcher hearts
Your Valentine’s scratcher is complete!

What you need:

Scratch account: Create a free Scratch account

Starter files: Download the images we are using in our game. You can also use your own images to customize your application. Download starter files

No coding experience is necessary for this tutorial. Beginner-friendly for ages 8 and up. Give it a try!

Step 1: Create a new project

Let’s start by creating a new project.

Visit https://scratch.mit.edu/, login to your account, and click on the “Create” button.

Now, we can code your Valentine’s scratcher!

Hint: You can also remix this project and others to see the code.

Step 2: Upload game board and card images

A new project will open up and you can see the Scratch interface.

In the starter files, we’ve included images for your game board, Valentine’s cards, and candy hearts.

Start by deleting the Scratch cat sprite that appears in every new project
Add all of the background images by clicking “Upload Backdrop”
In the Backdrops tab, select the “valentines_bg” image

These are the 6 different Valentine’s cards that can show after our user scratches a heart.

Hint: Instead of uploading backdrops, you can draw your own backdrops and add special messages here.

Recommended: Scratch Coding for Kids

X, Y positioning in Scratch

Before we move on, let’s talk about x and y coordinates.

Scratch uses x, y coordinates to position sprites on the screen. You might have seen these in math class.

x coordinate – a number of pixels along the horizontal axis of a display starting from the pixel (pixel 0) in the center of the screen.
y coordinate – a number of pixels along the vertical axis of a display starting from the pixel (pixel 0) in the center of the screen.

We’ll use these (x, y) coordinates to position our hearts and scratchers.

Valentine's Scratch tutorial xy position

Step 3: Position hearts and scratcher sprite

In Scratch, your images are called sprites.

Click on each candy heart sprite
Add the “When Green Flag Clicked” block
Change the x and y properties of each sprite using the “Go To” block
Repeat these steps for each candy heart, in the different positions listed

Click on the scratcher heart and place it on top of the first candy heart using “Go Forward 1 Layers” block.

Hint: You can put any heart in any position. Change the x, y positions of each heart to match your theme and background.

Step 4: Add a wand to scratch with

Our first scratcher is in position! We just need a way to scratch it. You can use or create any sprite as your scratcher, I’m using a magical wand.

Click “Choose a Sprite”
Search for and select the wand
Visit the “Costumes” tab to rotate the wand 45 degrees
Position the center of the wand in the center of the artboard
Go back to the code tab

Hint: Draw your own sprite to use as a scratcher. A claw, an arrow, a coin, you choose!

Step 5: Wave your wand

Next, we want the wand to follow our mouse cursor.

We can use a “Forever” block, which acts like a loop to repeat code. Pairing it with the “Go to mouse pointer” and “go to front layer” block means the wand will show up on the top and follow our mouse forever.

Click on your “Wand” sprite
Add a “Forever” block
Inside the “Forever” block use “Go to Front Layer” and “Go to Mouse-Pointer”

When you click the green flag, you should see your wand following your mouse.

Hint: You can also move your wand with your keyboard using an if-then the “Key Pressed” block.

Step 6: Create the scratched heart effect

Ready for scratching! Let’s create the scratcher effect every time our wand touches the silver scratcher.

Instead of erasing the actual sprite, we will create a series of costumes that look like our heart is being scratched off.

Click on your “scratcher1” sprite and go to the “Costumes” tab
Right click to “Duplicate” the costume
On the duplicate costume, select the eraser and partially erase the heart
Again, duplicate this new costume and repeat erasing until the heart is gone
Rename the final costume “last”
Reselect the first costume and return to the code tab

Hint: The more costumes you have, the longer it will take to reveal your card.

Step 7: Add scratcher logic

We’re going to reveal our candy hearts by changing costumes. When the candy heart is fully revealed, we will get to see our final Valentine’s card.

Click on your “scratcher1” sprite
Add a “Forever” loop and inside of it an “If-Then” block
If the scratcher is touching the wand, wait and change to the next costume

Now, when your wand hovers over the scratcher heart it should begin to disappear. But, it’s not coming back?

Add “Switch Costume To” block to show the full heart costume when green flag is clicked.

Hint: Instead of changing the costume when the sprites touch, you could also do it when you click on the heart.

Recommended: How to Make a Game on Scratch

Step 8: Reveal your Valentine’s card

What should happen when we’ve scratched off a heart? We finally get to reveal our sweet Valentine’s message!

Each scratcher heart should reveal a different card. We will use the “broadcast” block to hide all the blocks and show our card.

On our scratcher heart sprite, add another “If-Then” block (inside the first if-then block)
If the costume name is “last”, wait for 1 second then broadcast a message to hide all sprites
Then switch the backdrop to the card you want to show (card1)

Your card will show up, but all of your other sprites are still showing up. The other sprites need to receive the “Hide” message and do something with it.

For each of the other sprites, use the “Hide” block when they receive the message and then stop the script.