Another student in the lab I'm in has been working on something [0] to bridge between a Snap!-like environment (so, very similar to Scratch) to Python, complete with retaining the concept of sprites having separate code with event handlers and using blocks they'll recognize for sniplets they can drag in to get code that implements the same functionality. I believe it also allows importing of projects made with blocks. It's still very WIP but we're hoping it helps students smooth the transition from blocks.

[0] https://github.com/dragazo/PyBlox