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Today is National Deviled Egg Day and eggs are the star of the show on today’s menu! Celebrate with RAFT’s Egg Drop kit and make eggs the star of the show in the classroom! Egg Drop This STEAM learning kit encourages learners to combine simple materials to complete a simple task: catch a falling egg…

With help from Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley and DPR Construction, RAFT has a new and improved volunteer center. Thank you to the volunteers for revamping our volunteer center and providing an inviting space for our volunteers and staff. DPR Construction is a unique technical builder with a passion for results, consistently ranked in the top general contractors…

RAFT would like to give a HUGE congratulations and thank you to Anne Murphy for celebrating 25 years working at RAFT. Anne originally came to help out for only 6 weeks and stayed on the RAFT team as our accountant for the last 25 years. When asked what her favorite part of RAFT was, Anne…

Your input last year led to many significant changes to improve the shopping experience at RAFT. Here’s how your feedback helped us: Members wanted more direction within the store. So RAFT added signage throughout the store with more signs to come! Members wanted to buy more technology items for sale at RAFT. So we brought…

For 27 years, volunteers have played an important role at RAFT. Because of our volunteers, RAFT is able to make our resources available to the education community for affordable prices. An example of volunteers playing an important role at RAFT is Jean and Wayne Suzuki. Since the very beginning, they have supported RAFT and help…

Saturday, May 8: Do teachers ever fully retire? If you were to ask these teachers they would say no! RAFT relies heavily on volunteers to help make our resources accessible to the education community at low cost. On average around 6,000 volunteers support RAFT each year. Some of RAFT’s most dedicated volunteers are retired teachers.…

Two weeks ago, the Walden West Team was able to play with three new STEAM Project Kits: The Electric-wind Generator, Bread Bag Parachute, The Articulated Leg. Each person was able to design, prototype and test their designs in preparation for their summer camps. Over 300 students will be able to play with RAFT’s STEAM Project Kits…

It was a fun-packed, fast-paced day at Boronda Meadows Elementary School in Salinas on Wednesday, June 9th! Nearly 50 teachers from the Salinas City Elementary School District participated in a professional learning opportunity (PLO) arranged by Julie Stephens-Carrillo from Hartnell College. This PLO serves as the teacher kick-off for the Salinas City STEAM Summer School…

June 7th – 8th were busy days for the students at San Antonio Elementary School in San Jose. Nearly 50 students in grades K-5 built furniture for their school makerspace with RAFT! The makerspace build is a project from RAFT’s Education department where we come out to the school’s parking lot and build usable wooden…

RAFT has been fortunate to work with the very talented Jennifer Hunau, STEM Coordinator for the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, in developing a series of 9 STEAM kits for over 6,000 TK-2 students. Pictured below are materials for 12,870 kits that were shipped to the district’s 22 elementary schools. With over 19,000 kits…