The Parts and Crafts Collective is a group of thinkers, teachers, and tinkerers in the Boston area who are interested in fostering hands-on, creative education and play experiences with kids. We run hands-on, creative arts, science, and engineering classes and workshops for kids as well as a summer day camp. We also work to create and document projects and tools to help people learn things and do things. In our projects we try to create just the right mixture of resources and inspiration. In our space have an electronics workbench, hand-tools, a well-stocked art area, a handful of computers, and a variety of our favorite games and toys, and enough going on that kids can move between self-directed and counselor-led activities based on what they want to do and what they want to learn about.
We always have a bunch of stuff going on, and, if you have a project in mind, we’d love to figure out how to help you get it off the ground.
While we there is a lot of continuity from session to session, every program we run, and every week of summer camp, ends up having a slightly different mix of kids and counselors—every day is unique, every program moreso.
Our main project, and our favorite project, is our summer camp. At camp we get to set up all of our interesting materials and activities in one place, attract a bunch of interesting kids and adults, and give them all a lot of free time and space—cool stuff pretty much always happens.
What that stuff ends up being is totally unpredictable, but, to give a gist, our favorite summer camp activities include: making flashlights and blinky-light toys, making bread, making and playing musical instruments, launching soda-bottle rockets, hiking, stencils, computer games and animations, taking things apart, experiments with dry-ice, making and playing with juggling toys…