Gray Belt: Minecraft, Python & Roblox Coding
Minecraft & Roblox Coding in Brookline
The belt that gets a child off blocks and onto a keyboard, using the two games they already care about.
- Boston Parents Family Favorite seven years running
- Macaroni Kids Favorite 2025
- FIRST LEGO League & VEX Judges Award
- State finalists, FLL & VEX
- STEM.org accredited
- CSTA & NGSS aligned
Rigorous, project-based computer science. Students are given the requirements and reason their way to the solution — the way engineers actually work. Documented progress every month, and competition teams in VEX and FIRST LEGO League.
What your child leaves with
A portfolio
Working apps, games, robots and websites they built themselves — not a certificate of attendance. Everything is saved to their own profile.
A team
The route into our VEX and FIRST LEGO League competition teams, with a real season, a capped roster and tournament results.
A transcript
A written report every month explaining what they covered, the concept behind it, and what comes next. A fuller one at the end of each belt.
Gray Belt · iCode of Brookline2026/27 year
Minecraft & Roblox Coding — the Gray Belt
- Time
- Two hours a week, same day and time, across the ten-month program
- Group size
- Around six students to one instructor
- Length
- Ten months to complete a belt. Most students go on to the next one. 80 hours of instruction across the year.
- Start dates
- New cohorts in September, November, January and April. Seats are capped.
- Stage
- Typically ages 7 and up
- Entry
- After Scratch or equivalent block coding.
- Reports
- A written report every month, and a fuller one at the end of each belt — see a real one
- Location
- 698 Washington Street, Brookline
See Gray Belt class times
Book a free evaluation
Not sure this is the right belt? The free evaluation exists to answer exactly that — we place by what a student can do, never by age alone.
The hardest jump in a young programmer’s life is from dragging blocks to typing text, and most students never make it because nothing on the other side is worth the effort. The Gray Belt solves that by putting the reward first: Minecraft Education with MakeCode and Python, then Roblox with Lua — real typed languages with real syntax errors.
By the back half of the year students are writing Lua and Python by hand, designing a user interface, and debugging someone else’s code as well as their own. The games are the bait. The transition is the point.
What students actually learn
- MakeCode and Python in Minecraft Education, then Lua in Roblox Studio, and C# in Unity
- The transition from block coding to text-based coding
- Events, variables and functions — the core of every language after this one
- Game design principles, UI design and 3D modeling
- Debugging, and digital citizenship in an online building platform
The year, sprint by sprint
The Gray Belt runs in sprints across the school year, each one building on the last and ending in a final project.
- Introduction to Minecraft and Programming
- Intermediate Programming Concepts
- Advanced Programming Concepts
- From Blocks to Code
- Roblox Digital Citizenship and World Building
- Game Design for Roblox and Lua Programming
- Game Design for Roblox and Lua Programming II
- Adding Features
- Final Project
What they finish with
- Custom blocks and Python scripts built in Minecraft
- A custom Roblox game, written in Lua
You will know exactly what your child learned
Most parents six weeks into a coding class cannot say what their child has actually learned. A written report arrives every month: the topics covered, the concept behind each one in plain language, what your child actually built, where they found it easy and where they had to push, an instructor’s specific observation, and what is coming next. At the end of the belt there is a longer completion report — the whole ten months as a narrative, the skills portfolio, the capstone, and the natural next step.
The competition team runs alongside it
Our VEX and FIRST LEGO League teams are not a separate Saturday activity. A team place runs parallel to the belt, so the season feeds the same progress record — the robot goes in the portfolio and the season goes on the transcript. Rosters are capped and we hold the cap.
- Entry — FIRST LEGO League Explore · VEX IQ intro. Grades 2–4, About 16 weeks, 1.5 hours a week.
- Core — FIRST LEGO League Challenge · VEX IQ competitive. Grades 4–8, About 20 weeks, two hours a week.
- Advanced — VEX V5. Grades 8–12, About 20 weeks, two hours a week, eight students to one coach.
A place is conditional on being an enrolled student, and tryouts run in September. See the teams, rosters and season dates.
The question parents actually ask
“Is this just letting them play Minecraft and Roblox?”
It stops feeling like playing somewhere around sprint four, when the blocks run out and they have to type Python and Lua that compile. That is the design. We use the games because they buy us a child’s full attention for the least fun part of learning to program — the part where the computer refuses to run what you wrote and does not explain why.
If it is not working
Four sessions — about a month — then decide.
If your child is not engaged after four sessions, tell us and we refund the balance and release the seat.
How this differs from a club
A club is one hour a week for ten weeks, in a larger group, on a single topic — a good way to start and a good second activity. The Belt Program is two hours a week across a ten-month year, in a group of about six, with a written progress report every month and a capstone project. It is the deeper commitment and the one most families end up in. We teach this subject both ways: the Minecraft and Roblox clubs are the ten-week version, and are a sensible place to start. The Gray Belt is the year-long one.
If two hours a week is too much right now
Studio — One hour a week, ongoing. A flexible, AI-driven path with its own milestones, supervised by an instructor. The on-ramp for families who cannot give us two hours a week yet. Students move across to a belt when they are ready. It is a different product rather than a shorter belt, which is what keeps the belt itself meaning the same thing for every student who finishes one.
Questions
How is this different from the Minecraft and Roblox clubs?
The clubs are ten weeks each, one game, one hour a week, in a bigger group. The Gray Belt is ten months across both games, two hours a week, in a group of about six, and it is built around one specific goal a club cannot reach: leaving with the ability to write text code.
Does my child need to own the games?
No. Everything runs on our machines in the center with our licenses.
What comes after the Gray Belt?
Orange — web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — where the typing they just learned turns into something that runs in a browser and can be shown to anyone.
Where you’ll be
iCode of Brookline · 698 Washington Street, Brookline, MA 02446
857-547-8001
On Washington Street in Brookline Village, walkable from the Brookline Hills and Brookline Village T stops on the D branch. Metered parking on Washington Street and the Kent Street lot nearby.
Ready to start?
Book a free evaluation and we will tell you honestly which belt your child belongs in — or go straight to the Gray Belt class times.
Book a free evaluation
See Gray Belt class times
The ten belts, in order
Students move up the ladder as they are ready, not on a timetable. Most join partway up — the free evaluation is how we work out where.
- Junior Belt — Junior STEAM
- Foundation Belt — Scratch Coding & AI Foundations
- White Belt — Robotics, VEX & 3D Printing
- Gray Belt — Minecraft & Roblox Coding — you are here
- Orange Belt — Web Development & Design
- Yellow Belt — Mobile App Development
- Green Belt — Python, Drones & AI
- Red Belt — Game Development
- Blue Belt — Networking & Cybersecurity
- Black Belt — Java & AP Computer Science
