Foundation Belt: Scratch & AI
Scratch Coding & AI Foundations in Wellesley
Nine sprints with Codie the robot, ending in a game they designed themselves.
- Boston Parents Family Favorite seven years running
- Macaroni Kids Favorite 2026
- FIRST LEGO League & VEX Judges Award
- State finalists, FLL & VEX
- STEM.org accredited
- CSTA & NGSS aligned
Not a drop-in coding club. A ten-month program with a cohort, a competition team, and a monthly report that shows you exactly what your child built and why it mattered.
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.
Foundation Belt · iCode of Wellesley2026/27 year
Scratch Coding & AI Foundations — the Foundation 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 6 and up
- Entry
- First full coding belt. No experience needed.
- Reports
- A written report every month, and a fuller one at the end of each belt — see a real one
- Location
- 73 Central Street, Wellesley
See Foundation 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 Foundation Belt is where a child stops being shown computers and starts operating one. Touch typing, keyboard shortcuts, how a machine is actually put together — then Scratch, properly, until they can build a multi-level game rather than a single animated cat.
Codie, a learning robot, runs alongside the screen work so that a program has a physical consequence. Digital logic and circuits arrive in the middle of the year, and AI arrives as a collaborator: students learn what a large language model is, how to prompt one, and where its answer needs checking. That last part matters more each year.
What students actually learn
- Scratch 3 — sequence, events, variables, and multi-level game logic
- Computer basics, touch typing and keyboard shortcuts
- Computational thinking, logic tables and control flow
- Digital inputs and outputs, and hands-on invention with circuits
- Large language models, prompting and text generation — used, and questioned
The year, sprint by sprint
The Foundation Belt runs in sprints across the school year, each one building on the last and ending in a final project.
- Computer Foundations
- Intro to Programming with Scratch
- AI & Computational Thinking Fundamentals
- Intermediate Scratch Programming
- Digital Logic
- Exploring Professions
- AI-Enhanced Game Design in Scratch
- Hands-on Scratch
- Final Project
What they finish with
- A customized multi-level game of their own design
- Working circuits they built and programmed
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
“How is this different from the Scratch club?”
The club is ten weeks, one hour, one topic — a good way to find out whether your child likes this. The Foundation Belt is ten months, two hours, in a group of about six, and it covers the things a club has no room for: touch typing, digital logic, circuits, AI, and the agile habit of shipping something every sprint. Most families do the club first. The ones who stay come here.
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 Scratch club is the ten-week version, and is a sensible place to start. The Foundation 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
Does my child need to have done the Junior Belt?
No. Foundation is a legitimate starting point for a six or seven-year-old, and plenty of students begin here. The free evaluation tells us which of the two fits.
Is Codie a toy?
It is a teaching robot, and it is there because a program that moves something in the room teaches cause and effect faster than one that moves a sprite. The Scratch work is the substance; Codie makes it land.
Are you teaching them to use ChatGPT to do the work?
The opposite. They learn what a language model is, how to prompt it, and — the part that matters — how to tell when it is confidently wrong. A student who cannot read the code themselves is not helped by it, and that becomes obvious quickly.
Where you’ll be
iCode of Wellesley · 73 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02482
781-291-3131
Five minutes from Wellesley Middle School and a short drive from Schofield, Bates, Hardy, Hunnewell and Upham. Street parking on Central Street, plus the Municipal Way lot behind the building for pickup.
Ready to start?
Book a free evaluation and we will tell you honestly which belt your child belongs in — or go straight to the Foundation Belt class times.
Book a free evaluation
See Foundation 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 — you are here
- White Belt — Robotics, VEX & 3D Printing
- Gray Belt — Minecraft & Roblox Coding
- 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
