App Studio: Memes & Mini-Games
Scratch camp course · Ages 7–10
App Studio: Memes & Mini-Games
Don't just play apps — build the ones that make everyone laugh. Over five days and ten guided stages, campers build three goofy apps in Scratch: a Meme Soundboard, a Voice Changer, and a Cookie Clicker — all powered by their own recorded sounds and hand-drawn buttons.
What campers ship
Three real apps, not a worksheet
Every stage adds one piece of an app campers can run, click, and laugh at. The memes are theirs — they record their own voices and draw their own buttons. By Friday they have three finished apps saved to their own Scratch account.
A Meme Soundboard of buttons that play sounds you recorded yourself
A Voice Changer that turns your voice into a chipmunk or a monster
A Cookie Clicker game with a live score, upgrades, and an auto-clicker
App moments
Each stage adds something campers can click and hear
Every stage produces a visible, clickable change you can run and test — the screen is the proof.
Buttons that talk
Click a button, hear a sound. The same when-this-sprite-clicked block powers every button in all three apps.
Your own voice, recorded
Scratch's built-in recorder turns your voice into a meme. No copyrighted clips — every sound is one you made.
Chipmunk and monster
One pitch block bends your recorded voice high or low. Same clip, totally different character.
The cookie that counts
A variable remembers your score, an if/then sells upgrades, and a forever loop makes the cookie earn on its own.
Original meme examples
Course-owned example memes show the tone: silly, safe, and invented here. Campers still make their own.
Course path
Three apps, built stage by stage
Each stage names what is new in the app and the one idea behind it.
Make a Button That Talks
A sprite plays a sound every time you click it.
Add a second soundStage 2Record Your Own Meme Sounds
Buttons play sounds you recorded with the Scratch microphone.
Re-record it funnierStage 3Design the Board
Draw your own buttons and lay out a finished soundboard. App 1 done.
Add a title and backdropStage 4Record and Replay Your Voice
A button records and plays back your own voice on demand.
Record a longer phraseStage 5Chipmunk and Monster Voice
The pitch effect bends your voice high or low — three voice buttons.
Add a tiny-mouse and a giantStage 6One Button, Many Voices
Broadcasts let buttons drive one Voice sprite. App 2 done.
Make the face reactStage 7The Cookie Counts
A variable counts every click and shows a live score.
Make the cookie popStage 8Spend Your Cookies
An if/then lets you buy an upgrade that boosts your click power.
Add a no-money buzzerStage 9The Cookie Makes Itself
A forever loop earns cookies on a timer — your first auto-clicker.
Make cookies fall with clonesStage 10Meme App Jam
Remix everything into one personal app and demo it to the room.
Add a confetti showerFor camp flow
Default path first
Each stage default is a finished, clickable app piece. Stretch challenges add depth when campers finish early.
What is Scratch?
Scratch is a free website where you build apps and games by snapping together colored blocks. Each block does one thing — play a sound, wait one second, change a number, switch costume. Stack the blocks and you have a program. No typing code.
Scratch was made by MIT to teach kids ages 7 and up how programs work. We use Scratch in this course because the ideas behind it (events, sounds, variables, broadcasts) are the same ideas used in every app and every programming language. Learn them here, and Python and JavaScript will feel familiar later.
This week you don't just play apps — you build the silly ones that make everyone laugh.
Three apps in one week
This course builds three apps, and each one is harder than the last. You finish one, then use what you learned to start the next.
- App 1 — Meme Soundboard. Buttons you click to play sounds. The twist: the sounds are yours. You record your own voice and noises right inside Scratch, and you draw your own buttons.
- App 2 — Voice Changer. Record your voice, then press a button to play it back as a squeaky chipmunk or a deep monster. Same voice, totally different character.
- App 3 — Cookie Clicker. A clicking game where a number counts up every time you click. Then you add upgrades, and finally an auto-clicker that earns for you while you watch.
The last stage is a Meme App Jam — you mix tricks from all three apps into one app that is all your own, and demo it to the room.
The "memes" in this course are the ones you make. You record your own funny sounds and draw your own pictures — nothing copied from the internet. That keeps everything safe, original, and a hundred times funnier because it's yours.
You will see a few example memes in the course art — a dramatic banana, a sleepy cloud, a tiny trumpet, a cookie boss. Those are original examples made for this course to show the level of silliness we want. Use them for inspiration, then invent your own.
5-day camp schedule
Each day is about 3 hours. The stage minutes below are the building time — the rest of each day is for testing, snacks, and stretch challenges.
| Day | Course work | Build time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Course Intro (30) · Setup (45) · Stage 1 (45) · Stage 2 (50) | 170 min |
| 2 | Stage 3 (60) · Stage 4 (60) | 120 min |
| 3 | Stage 5 (70) · Stage 6 (70) | 140 min |
| 4 | Stage 7 (80) · Stage 8 (90) | 170 min |
| 5 | Stage 9 (90) · Stage 10 — Meme App Jam + Demo (90) | 180 min |
Friday closes with the parent demo. Plan around it.
Total build time = 30 + 45 + 45 + 50 + 60 + 60 + 70 + 70 + 80 + 90 + 90 + 90 = 780 minutes (13 hours of building). The remaining ~2 hours across the week are buffer: testing, recording do-overs, stretch challenges, and the Friday demo.
If a stage runs long, pull time from that stage's stretch challenges first. Stage 10 (the jam + demo) is the only block that should never get squeezed. Days 2 and 3 are lighter on purpose — Stage 5 (pitch) and Stage 6 (broadcasts) are the two trickiest ideas, so leave room to slow down.
Who this is for
This course is built for ages 7–10. Reading levels and language stay simple. New Scratch words get defined in a vocab card on every stage. Every stage has a short "Teacher demo" callout at the top and "Coach notes" callout at the bottom — instructors can scan those two callouts to know what to show and what to watch for.
Campers do not need to know how to code beforehand. The only tool is Scratch. It runs in the browser on the lab iMacs — no installs, no phones, no app store. Everything you build lives in your Scratch account and plays right there on the screen.