What next after Scratch? 3D coding with Flock XR

Quick Answer: The best next step after Scratch depends on what a young person enjoys most. For kids who want to keep making games, animations, and visual projects without getting frustrated by text syntax, 3D block-based coding (such as Flock XR) is the ideal bridge. Other options include text-based creative coding (p5.js, Godot), physical computing (MakeCode with micro:bit), or staying in Scratch to build more advanced projects.

Scratch is a very popular 2D creative coding tool which young people can use to create games, animations and art projects. I created the Flock XR block-based 3D coding tool because I think that’s the right next step after Scratch for the majority of young people. Many children really enjoy creating in Scratch and want to continue their creative coding journey into other tools. I'm going to look at options for what comes next after Scratch. I'm focusing on creative coding because I think that's usually what's behind the question. Parents and educators want to support children, particularly girls and creative young people, to keep that enthusiasm rather than lose interest by moving to professional tools too soon. I’ve seen many young people move to text-based coding and become frustrated or disheartened, so it’s important to make the right choice. I’d also be careful of AI approaches that mirror professional software development practices that are already out of date.

There’s a choice of next steps after Scratch

For young people who want to continue with creative coding, I think there are three particularly interesting directions after Scratch:

• 3D block-based coding — move from a 2D stage into 3D worlds, modelling, physics, animation, XR and spatial computing. We created our 3D coding tool Flock XR to offer a route into 3D for age 7-14+.
• Text-based art or games coding — move from blocks to text while continuing to create games, art and interactive projects using tools such as p5.js, Godot or Roblox Studio.
• Vibe coding — describe what you want and use AI to generate and revise software.

There is also a fourth perfectly valid option: keep using Scratch or make a sideways move into physical computing with an option like MakeCode and micro:bit.

Creative coding direction	Good options	Good fit if they want to…
3D creative coding	Flock XR	Create 3D games, worlds, animations and simulations; without having to move from blocks to text at the same time. Use a physics engine, particle effects and spatial audio.
Text-based creative coding	p5.js, Godot, Roblox Studio	Learn a text-based language while keeping a strong focus on making creative projects. Optionally, AI-assisted.
Vibe coding	Vibe coding tools	Experiment with creating software through prompts and AI-generated code.
More block-based coding	Scratch, MakeCode	Keep using Scratch and other block-based educational coding tools and go deeper rather than progressing on the next step.

These options offer different kinds of progression. The best choice depends on what will engage a specific young person. If you're an educator considering a whole class or more then make sure to pick at option that works for the majority. 

I've taken a look at a few examples of where this question has been asked on Reddit, Hacker News, Facebook and the Scratch forum. There's generally a concern that a child seems ready for something else but that they don't want to lose the enthusiasm they have by moving to a boring professional tool and taking a step back in what they can create. There is often a sense of needing to move the child on to a text-based language to do ‘real programming’.

I think it's important to balance those two motivations and find an option that is both creative and on a path to professional tools.

3D creative coding with Flock XR

Flock XR, our 3D block-based coding tool, is a good fit for young people who love making games, animations and visual projects in Scratch and want to move into 3D without having to learn text syntax at the same time. I originally developed the Flock XR 3D creative tool as ‘what next after Scratch’ to address this issue in a way that is accessible to all young people. Flock XR has since expanded its age group to 7–14+ so it's now more than just the next step after Scratch and can be an alternative. But for young people already using Scratch it's a great creative coding next step or an alternative for variety.

Flock XR is a browser-based 3D coding and modelling tool for making creative projects such as games and interactive entertainment, animations, simulations and data visualisations. The XR stands for extended reality and Flock XR is a WebXR educational tool with support for VR and AR. Flock XR has been designed with a deliberate onward path to professional 3D creative tools for developing games and for 3D modelling.

Basically, you can do the kinds of things you can do in Scratch but in 3D:

• Instead of 2D sprites you have gorgeous 3D objects and characters designed by Arts Council Award winner Liz Smart. A library of 3D models is included in Flock XR so you can get started quickly.
• Instead of costumes animated with code you have built-in animations such as walk, dance and wave. This works in the same way as in professional 3D tools.
• Instead of a 2D paint tool, you can customise 3D models and combine shapes to make new 3D objects. In Flock XR this happens on the canvas rather than in a separate paint tool (educators have said this makes it easier in some ways). You can also use a range of materials, just like in the professional tools.
• Instead of 2D panning sound, you can use spatial audio to place included sounds or your own musical compositions in 3D space.
• You have a built-in professional physics engine (commonly requested for Scratch), particle effects for creating smoke, butterflies, sparkles and more.
• And you can create spatial computing projects for VR/AR, connect to the micro:bit to respond to sensors, and export models for 3D printing. Lots of ways to learn to develop for the future of human-computer interaction.

And this all works with familiar drag-and-drop blocks based on the same Blockly technology, but with full keyboard accessibility and some more grown up coding features such as code that organises itself top to bottom and the ability to use text-based content assist if you want to start typing code.

Flock XR is free, open source and zero install. No accounts: just save and load projects so you're in control of your data. It runs on laptops, Chromebooks and mobile devices. Flock XR has lots of ways to get started quickly including example projects and code snippets. There are also free and paid resources including a full programming curriculum with video lessons from Rebecca Franks, a qualified primary and secondary school teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience. Rebecca also has a YouTube series From Scratch to 3D which specifically builds on learner’s 2D Scratch knowledge.

Next steps after Flock XR include moving to a web 3D engine such as Babylon.js and the Havok physics engine, which Flock XR uses under the covers; moving to a professional game engine such as Unity, Unreal or Godot; or moving to Blender for more advanced 3D modelling. Flock XR has been designed for this progression so it doesn’t have the same ‘what next’ issue as Scratch.

Flock XR is developed by Flip Computing, an inclusion-first technology education company founded by three women to flip the narrative on who gets to create with technology.

Why 3D coding?

3D creative coding is very obviously the next step after 2D coding. With the right tool it’s not necessarily harder and we’re increasingly finding that 3D is a great beginner option before 2D coding. 3D coding maps more naturally to a young person’s understanding of the physical world. I explored this in more detail in Is 3D coding harder than 2D coding? Maybe not.

Another reason is that young people are very familiar with 3D worlds from the games they play such as Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite. This means they value creating in 3D because the output is relevant and meaningful to them.

Another reason is the growing importance of spatial computing which links the digital and physical world in new ways. The future of human-computer interaction involves technology being more naturally integrated with the physical world rather than just existing in devices with screens. This is happening across many industries such as manufacturing, architecture, fashion design and retail. And the next frontiers of AI are spatial intelligence and world models. Creating in 3D also develops important spatial reasoning skills.

Learning to create in 3D space is a relevant skill for the future. I've recently written an academic paper on computational spatial fluency: the ability to express spatial intent computationally.

A young person might want one object to face another object, move through a world, sit on a surface, stay inside an area, respond when another object comes close or behave differently depending on its surroundings. These ideas require a combination of computational thinking and spatial reasoning.

3D coding in Flock XR is a progression from Scratch in three ways:

1. Working in the rich medium of 3D instead of 2D.
2. Using professional vocabulary and ideas such as a physics engine, particle effects and 3D animations without having to transition to text-based coding at the same time. This makes the next transition to professional 3D tools much smoother.
3. Developing an understanding of spatial computing including working with objects in 3D space and making connections to the physical world.

Progressing towards professional creative tools

Flock XR has been designed with a deliberate onward path to professional 3D creative tools such as Unity, Unreal, Godot and Blender.

Young people learn concepts and vocabulary such as particle effects, physics, materials and working with 3D animations and spatial audio. You can create 3D scenes using visual gizmos, just like in professional tools. Note that professional 3D tools include visual programming options too.

Text-based creative coding

If you do have a young person who genuinely wants to learn text-based coding in a creative way and isn't going to be put off or frustrated by it, then I'd consider p5.js for creative coding.

p5.js is wonderful and comes from the creative coding tradition. I recommend Daniel Shiffman’s joyful Coding Train YouTube channel if you know a young person who would enjoy computational art, though much of it is a bit beyond ‘next step after Scratch.’

Note that much of what you can do in p5.js you can also do in Scratch, so make sure your young person has fully explored generative art in Scratch or Flock XR first.

Godot with GDScript is another option. Godot is an open source games engine which uses a Python-like syntax. Or there's Roblox Studio with Luau (similar to Lua) if the young person enjoys Roblox.

I'd recommend Flock XR as a transition to Godot or Roblox Studio because it introduces game engine concepts without also having to learn text coding at the same time.

It's fair to ask whether young people still need to learn text coding. I think it's much harder to make the argument that they need to learn young to be ready for a career as a professional coder. However, I don't think it's a waste of time if the interest is there. There are also ways to use AI-assisted coding to help with either code generation or the learning process.

AI-assisted and vibe coding

Vibe coding is a good fit for young people who are more interested in exploring ideas and getting to a finished result quickly than in understanding or controlling every part of the implementation. Vibe coding can allow a young person to create polished, but sometimes inconsistent, outputs from text prompts and never look at the code at all.

Many young people are rejecting using AI to do creative work, so be aware of that. Also consider what they want to get out of the process. Vibe coding can be fun for exploring what is possible and for making ‘friend slop’ projects. But many young people want more control over the creative process and they need a way to learn critical and computational thinking themselves.

Smaller projects that they understand in more detail are really valuable. AI can reduce the effort needed to produce software, but producing more software isn't necessarily the same goal as giving a child more opportunities to make creative and computational decisions.

I'd include vibe coding as an option, but not the only option. Prompting is another creative tool to learn. It doesn't have to become the new final destination after Scratch for those who genuinely enjoy the details of the creative process. Don't forget to check the age ratings on tools and remember that there may be a charge for token use.

Should kids learn AI prompting instead of coding?

AI prompting is a useful new creative skill, but I don't think it should simply replace ‘every child should learn to code’ as the next universal prescription. There is a familiar pattern here. For years, parents and schools were told that all children needed to learn to code because coding was the skill of the future. Some people understandably now feel that they were sold something that AI has made obsolete.

Coding was around for much longer than prompting. Today's prompting practices are much less guaranteed to be the defining professional skill of the next twenty years than typing Python was. Industry professionals have moved on to agentic workflows and spec-driven development. Personally I’m also hopeful that we’ll find a way to accelerate coding that is both less energy intensive and more deterministic. The current generation of coding assistants might be better than coding by hand but I’d be disappointed if they’re the end of the line.

Young people need something more durable than training for the interface that happened to make mainstream news a couple of years ago.

You can make the argument that they also learned computational thinking when they were text coding and will do so when prompting. Well wouldn’t it be better to give them tools designed for their current developmental stage where they can also get those benefits?

Creative coding in a world with AI

The world of creative technology is changing rapidly. We need to make sure that young people have the skills and motivation to participate whatever the future brings.

For me, the keys are enjoyment and personal development. Young people need to enjoy creating with technology in order to keep doing it. And they need opportunities for personal growth. The thing AI can't do is learn for them.

My focus is on developing capabilities that survive changes in tools: creative judgement, computational thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, understanding systems and the confidence to make things with technology. I looked at this more in Should Kids Still Learn to Code Now We Have AI?.

The way software developers work in industry is changing rapidly from the prompting loop of a couple of years ago to agentic engineering and spec-driven development. I'd caution against teaching 12 year olds the work practices of professionals in 2026 (actually what I tend to see is the work practices of a couple of years ago, the professionals have moved on).

The professionals can do what they do, in part, because they learned computational thinking before we had AI tools. That doesn’t mean that I’m advocating for young people to learn the way I did. Times have changed. We need to make sure that young people have opportunities to learn durable skills in a way that makes sense now. And I think creative 3D offers that opportunity in a way that is appealing to the majority of young people.

Why I want to give young people the opportunity to make things directly

My approach to this is to provide a tool that allows young people to work directly in a creative medium but with high-level features so that they can get results quickly. In Flock XR, they can work directly with 3D objects in a visual scene and work with professional concepts that have been packaged up into coding blocks.

This provides an alternative to vibe coding which requires lots of typing and a lot more waiting. That's not a fun game loop. In Flock XR the system reacts to your actions immediately and you get a much quicker feedback loop with many more opportunities to make big and small decisions. Move an object. Change a value. Add some physics. Change the colors of a material. Try an animation. Run it. See what happens. Change your mind.

That rapid loop matters because creative judgement develops through making decisions, seeing their consequences and deciding what to do next. It's this practice that allows young people to develop the judgement, critical thinking and decision-making skills that they will need for the future.

AI can help them make things faster. I still want them to have plenty of opportunities to be the person making the decisions and developing their sense of style as well as their computational and spatial thinking. Increasingly we are going to need young people who can make decisions about what gets created.

More block-based coding

Sometimes the next step after Scratch is more Scratch

More block-based coding is a good fit if they are still enjoying Scratch, want to go deeper rather than move on, or want a sideways move into physical computing. For a child or young person who loves Scratch, the next step may be more Scratch. That ‘high ceiling’ phrase is true. Kids create 3D rendering engines, 2D platformers and high quality animations.

I've previously written about why Scratch is real programming. I’ve seen many children try text-based coding and then go back to Scratch. I’ve seen others try text-based coding and be put off coding and not go back to Scratch because they think they’ve outgrown it but don’t see a future in coding if Python is the next step.

Don’t decide that a young person has ‘outgrown Scratch’ just because they've used it for a few years. They may simply need new ideas, more ambitious projects or a different creative challenge. If they still enjoy Scratch, there's no educational reason to push them out of it. Before I built Flock XR, Scratch was still my go to language for creating a quick project (and I have a computer science PhD.)

Try physical computing with MakeCode and micro:bit

MakeCode for the micro:bit is a good sideways move if the child might be interested in computer hardware. The micro:bit v2 is a mini computer with a 5×5 display of red LEDs, a speaker and a range of sensors.

I co-authored the micro:bit in Wonderland book which combines coding and craft and offers a way into creative hardware projects.

MakeCode offers block-based coding and there are options to move on to text-based coding as appropriate.

Progression doesn't have to mean ‘harder coding’. A child can keep using familiar programming ideas while suddenly having to think about sensors, physical outputs and the behaviour of a real object. Note that Flock XR integrates with the micro:bit too so you can create spatial computing projects by combining the technologies.

Frequently asked questions about what comes after Scratch

What should a child learn after Scratch?

There isn't one correct next step after Scratch. If they want to continue with creative coding, the main options include 3D creative coding with a tool such as Flock XR, text-based creative coding with tools such as p5.js or Godot, AI-assisted coding, physical computing with MakeCode and micro:bit, or simply continuing with more ambitious Scratch projects.

Is Python the best next step after Scratch?

Honestly, I’m not a fan of teaching Python to young people. I don’t even think it’s that easy to read. If you’re working with older teens on a vocational course and doing a task that is authentic to Python then that’s great. But I don’t think it’s appropriate to teach it to young teenagers en masse.

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world and opens up creating for the web. There are lots of creative and graphic libraries available. Most websites use JavaScript, or its variant TypeScript, for the front-end and it’s often used for the backend too. But again, I’d only introduce it if a young person wants to create the kind of projects that are suited to JavaScript and is ready for it.

The argument for teaching text-based programming languages to 11-14 year olds is very hard to make now that we have generative AI for coding. I think non-specialists will have other ways to create with technology than learning arcane syntax. This isn’t about cognitive offloading, it’s about making room for other more interesting learning and development.

Is block-based programming real coding?

Yes.

Block-based programming is real programming. The representation is visual or high-level, but the young person is still working with computational ideas such as sequence, selection, iteration, variables, events, functions and state. Scratch itself has an extremely high ceiling. I once got a long way through the Advent of Code challenge for adults using Scratch.

And in a 3D creative environment, block-based programming can be used to work with concepts such as physics, transforms, animation, materials and spatial relationships.

The question of whether code is represented as text or blocks is separate from the question of how sophisticated the underlying computational ideas are. This is one reason I don't think children need to ‘graduate’ from blocks just because they reach a particular age or experience level.

Is 3D coding harder than 2D coding?

3D coding is not necessarily harder than 2D for beginner tasks if you have the right tool. 3D introduces additional concepts and gives much more room for complexity, but direct manipulation and visual tools can make many basic spatial tasks intuitive. Young people are also very familiar with 3D virtual worlds from games.

Does 3D coding help spatial reasoning?

Spatial reasoning gives young people opportunities to work with spatial ideas such as position, orientation, relative relationships and physical behaviour. Good tools should provide scaffolding for developing those ideas rather than assuming that learners already have strong spatial skills.

Should children learn AI prompting instead of coding?

AI prompting is useful, but it shouldn't simply replace coding as the next universal skill that every child is told they must learn. Coding, creative technology and AI can all provide valuable experiences. The more durable skills are creative judgement, critical thinking, computational thinking, problem solving and understanding how digital systems behave.

Can a child keep using Scratch after starting another tool?

Absolutely. Moving on doesn't have to mean giving something up. Scratch, Flock XR, MakeCode, Godot, p5.js and other creative tools develop overlapping but different skills. Young people can use whichever tool fits the project they want to make.

Young people enjoy remaking projects they made in Scratch when they start creating in Flock XR. Moving backwards and forwards and understanding the similarities and differences is fertile ground for developing computational thinking.