Grateful Adventures: Thank You for Supporting Our Bay Area Discovery Museum Field Trip!

“PVF created the Technology, Engineering and Design Thinking (TED) Program in 2022, funded by the Maxwell-Hanrahan Foundation, to support teachers looking to enhance their students’ STEM/STEAM learning in the form of hands-on projects, classroom resources, curriculum supports, guest subject experts and professional development.”

PVF loves to hear from grantees, partner organizations, and teachers about their experiences. Read a letter from Lorraine Gray, a kindergarten teacher at Collins Elementary School in Contra Costa County who was awarded a grant to take a trip to the Discovery Bay Museum.

“On February 6, 2025, forty kindergarten students and their chaperones took a field trip to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. The students listened to Three Billy Goats Gruff and a troll could not sleep. The students needed to design something that would let the troll sleep. They were given a lot of different materials. With that they built new bridges, houses for the troll, earphones, and a few rockets to solve the problem.

The students were able to learn about the engineering design process – Think, Make, Try. The students were able to come up with their own design and make it. None of them gave up. They just kept trying. They were excited that they could create something new that worked when tested. They liked that they got to take home their projects.

The students are excited to keep on learning about engineering. They are already thinking about making mini rain shelters that would have been useful on this trip. They also got to see other exhibits like iceless ice skating, the how does it work room, and the train room.

Thank you for the $1,000 TED Teacher Resource Grant that made this field trip possible to take our students on a excursion. I am grateful to see the students so happy to get to learn outside of the classroom and thinking about careers in engineering!”