Programs
Explore different Programs at
Parts & Crafts
No matter if you're looking for an afterschool program, a drop-in day during a school vacation week, a new home for your homeschooler, or a summer fun program your kid is welcome at Parts & Crafts! All of our programs are for kids ages 7-13. All of our registration is done through a site called Amilia - it will involve selecting the program you're interested in, creating an account for your child, uploading emergency contact information, allergy information, ect. We look forward to engaging in creative projects with your kiddo!
Homeschooling together at our Center for Semi-Conducted Learning (CSCL)
This year (2025) we're running CSCL programming on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am - 3pm. We are available for parent meetings, preliminary visits to the space, etc., on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays until 2pm. We highly encourage families to come for a visit day before registering, as well as having a meeting with one or more of our directors & staff. If you'd like to schedule a meeting, email contact@partsandcrafts.org!
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Opened in September of 2012, the Center for Semi-Conducted Learning has been a joyful experiment in creating meaningful relationships between kids and adults and amongst themselves. While we don't follow any one pedagogical theory, we have been known to respect, admire and draw from a number of educational philosophies. The Albany Free School, founded by Mary Leue in the 1960s was an important influence, as well as Summerhill in the UK, and elements of Reggio, Montessori, and even Waldorf thought & practice have been known to pop up here and there. We are not a school, and we are not a fully democratic place of education, although we do respect those types of programs. We give the kids a whole lot more freedom than they are often used to when they come to us. We have rules, and we have expectations that everyone "be excellent to each other." The schedule of the day determines a lot of the patterns of activities, which are then unfortunately required to be divided up into chunks somewhat artificially. However, these are the sacrifices we make in order to put calories in our bodies.
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Arrival starts at 9am, with Morning Meeting at 9:30, where we go over announcements and schedule for the day. After the recap, we go about our mornings until we call cleanup time at about 11:15. Cleanup is one of the few absolutely mandatory things we require everyone in the space to participate in. When it's sufficiently clean, we have an hour for lunch, hanging out, playing games, sometimes going outside, watching cat videos on the internet, or even resuming our projects from the morning. This is the one time of day kids can participate in "passive consumption of media" that is otherwise prohibited as part of our computer use policy. At 12:30 we reconvene for Afternoon Meeting, which is a mirror of the morning one. Announcements, Schedule, Recap, Go! At 2:30 or so, depending on the level of mess, we do another big Cleanup Time! Then it's time to pack up and start going home or getting ready to be picked up.
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The days are a pretty even mix of social and academic, with a lot of focus in recent years on collaborative projects that combine the two, such as Current Events and Dungeons & Dragons. There is plenty of room for creative solo work, and small group learning, such as individual crafting projects, and small programming classes working on Arduino or Blender projects.
Make Friends
One of the main reasons folks come to Parts & Crafts as part of their homeschooling curricula is that this is a welcoming, friendly, open, & excellent place to make new friends based around shared interests. Groups of friends will often collectively decide on something they want to learn about & we dive in. Other times we offer classes that allow kids to form new friendships.
Get Wildly Creative
We are first and foremost a maker space. We have tools, supplies, and resources to allow kids to use their vast imaginations to explore their creative dreams. From Halloween costumes, holiday and birthday gifts, or just plain brilliance, we have watched kids create and invent so many wonderful projects. We have electronics, textiles, books, duct tape, cardboard, velcro, hot glue & more.
Afterschool at Parts & Crafts
We run our afterschool makerspace program Monday through Friday, 3pm - 5:30pm. Any child aged 7-13 is welcome at our program! For schools in our immediate vicinty (Cambridgeport, Argenziano, and King Open), we run a "walking-schoolbus" where we will have a staff member pick up kids from the school and walk them over to Parts & Crafts. All activities at our afterschool program are opt-in, child-directed, and vary from day to day. Options include, but are never limited to, making cup-bots, building with LEGO, reading on a couch, doing homework, going to the playground, drawing, making a diorama, working on Scratch projects, sewing, board games, and more!
Caahd-boahhd!
We love making things out of cardboard & duct tape around here! In addition to our 10' tall giant robot, made over the course of many years by Mike & kids, we use this magical substance to create miniature worlds, marble run games, medieval armor, containers for Magic cards, hockey rinks, battle-bot arenas, miniature rooms, and anything else we can come up with. Of course cardboard is nothing without duct tape, which, like the Force, has a light side and a dark side, and holds the universe together. We're also big fans of hot glue, another adhesive we could never live without.
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Freedom of Creativity
At our afterschool program, as with all our programs, we don't tell kids what they "have" to do (other than clean up at cleanup time), but rather ask them what they want to do. Staff members will often have a project they're excited to work on & invite kids to join in, maybe get out some boxes of beads & wire, or paper & drawing pencils, fabric & needle and thread. Kids can choose to join, or not, and move on to something else whenever they want with no hard feelings! We usually try to offer an outdoor trip of some sort, depending on the weather.
Collegial Atmosphere
We don't grade or evaluate any of the kids' projects or efforts, rather we like to think of them as colleagues, people we work with to do awesome things. We encourage them to ask for help if they need it, but we aren't going to do their project *for* them. We provide tools, materials, advice, resource guides, and the like, and will occasionally suggest ideas if they seem stuck or frustrated. We want them to succeed, have fun, and as always, be excellent to each other!
Vacation Programs
When school is out, we are open! We started in 2010 as a summer camp, and this is the heart of Parts & Crafts. Every summer we open our doors to kids from all over the Boston area who want to make, play, take things apart, build, create, learn, and have fun! Summer sessions are lightly themed for flavor, while the weeks we run during the school year are more seasonal. We run sessions during February and April vacation, and in December, if the stars and weekends align.
Winter Break
When schools close in late December to early January, if there are enough work days in between and staffing available such that it works out, we sometimes run a 3-5 day session of Winter Camp, which often focuses on making of gifts for those that exchange them, as well as all of our normal activities. When we get the opportunity to run this camp, it is often small, cozy, and quiet.
February & April Break
Schools again close for a week in February and April. The weather is often a grab bag of glorious sunshine and a hot mess. We plan for all contingencies, urging kids to bring snow gear as well as sunscreen to these wacky New England weather weeks. We of course do all our usual projects, but these are often our first tastes of the outdoors after a long winter.
Summer Programs
Our week-long summer sessions run from roughly a week after the end of the school year to two weeks before Labor Day. These dates are not carved in stone, as the start and end dates of the school year fluctuate from year to year, especially considering snow days an other factors. Each week is themed for flavor, some more heavily influencing the week than others. We love to end the summer with the P&C Arcade!