Kids’ Carpentry, an “after-school math enrichment program” that has quietly served Northern California for nearly 30 years, just opened a branch in Minnesota, has added a new program in Berkeley, Calif., and is preparing to bring its woodworking classes to six more cities in the Bay Area by the end of the year.

And so many parents have been trying to get their children into the Tinkering School, a sleepover summer camp in Montara, Calif., where children 8 to 17 build sailboats and treehouses, that the program recently opened in Austin, Tex., and plans to expand into an entire K-12 school in San Francisco in September; programs in Chicago and Buffalo, N.Y., are in the works for 2012.

“There is an awakening going on for sure,” said Doug Stowe, a longtime woodworker and educator in Arkansas, who was named a Living Treasure there in 2009 for his efforts at preserving and teaching the craft. Since he started a blog five years ago called Wisdom of the Hands, named after the program he founded in 2001 at Clear Spring School in Eureka Springs, Mr. Stowe said parents, educators and woodworkers from around the country have been contacting him for advice on starting projects and classes in their communities.

“Up until the early 1900s, there was a widespread understanding that the use of the hands was essential to the development of character and intellect,” said Mr. Stowe, 62. “More recently, we’ve had this idea that every child should go to college and that the preparation for careers in manual arts was no longer required.”

Somewhere along the way, he added, “we have forgotten all the other important things that manual training conveys.”

PREVIOUS generations may have learned to use tools at their fathers’ or grandfathers’ workbenches, but today’s parents often need woodworking classes themselves before they can pass along the knowledge.

Christopher Landy, 42, a television lighting designer in Brooklyn, dealt with what he jokingly calls an “early midlife crisis” by learning construction at Makeville Studio. “It’s very relaxing and it’s a great release from work,” said Mr. Landy, who is using his new skills to build a workshop at his weekend home in Columbia County, N.Y.