RAFT Hands-On Education

Deborah Jacobstein proudly displays her students' art works made with RAFT materials! Deborah Jacobstein, one of RAFT ’s longstanding members, has found beautiful, artistic and highly innovative ways to repurpose RAFT materials like cork and matt boards, double sided sticky papers, die cuts, pill bottles, bottle top lids and many more into Judaica – artifacts connected to decorative Jewish ritual objects. Cork boards give life to sandy floors in a miniature sukkah (a temporary hut created during the festival of Sukkot) while bottle top lids become the feet for many things. Ordinary white pill bottles transform into colorful, scented Havdallah spice bottles--these spice bottles are used at the end of the Sabbath to remind Jews of its sweetness. The list goes on! RAFT inspired Tzedakah boxes This art educator teaches students from preschool to eighth grade at Temple Emanu-El ’s Religious School art program. Temple Emanu-El, one of the oldest Reform Jewish congregations o...

Come meet RAFT ’s Math Activity Developer, Jeanne Lazzarini, at RAFT San Jose who has a treasure chest of Pi-Day activities to share!  Not only will she be dressed as a Pirate (because Pi rates!), she’ll also offer you delicious pie to eat while showing you great Pi-Day Math activities to make and take, to use in your classroom to celebrate Pi day! The Pi-Day activities include RAFT Math Idea Sheet activities like Finding Pi , Wearable Pi and Pi Day Pin . Irrational number Pi, also written as π, is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and is celebrated all over the world on March 14th because π is a number that begins as 3.14!  With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated trillions of digits past the decimal point! Pi is an irrational and transcendental number, and its digits continue infinitely without any repeating patterns of digits!  Pi has been used in many applications for over 4000 years! π rate activity days at RAFT! Join us at R...

Flextronics Foundation recently donated $10,000 dollars in support of the core component of RAFT ’s Education program – creatively repurposing materials donated by local businesses into pre-packaged Activity Kits that facilitate hands-on learning of Math and Science. Add caption RAFT’s mission is to transform teaching by creating engaging hands-on educational activities that inspire the joy and discovery of learning. RAFT works with more than 10,000 educators in the classroom, home-school settings and, after-school and community based programs. RAFT 's products ( Idea Sheets and Activity Kits ), professional development services including mentoring and educational workshops , and low-cost teaching supplies enrich and improve the education of over 825,000 young people each year. RAFT Activity Kits are based on over 650 curriculum-aligned RAFT Idea Sheets that cover a range of grade levels and subjects. The Flextronics Foundation has awarded a total of $25,000 in grants...

I am an elementary school teacher at Orchard School .  Before the winter holidays I spent three days teaching my class about moon activities that I had learned at a RAFT workshop last summer entitled 'Crafty Moon Activities'.  The lessons I used to introduce the moon to my second and third graders were:  Modeling the Moon’s Rotation, Moon: Nearside-Far side, and Nine and a Half to the Moon.  In these lessons, based on RAFT Idea Sheets , the children learned using movement and hands on materials where and how the moon moves, what it looks like on both sides of the moon, and physically how far the moon is from the earth.   We then talked about the fact that the moon doesn’t change shape, but that the reflection of the sunlight on the moon creates the images that we see at night. To illustrate this point, I used the RAFT Idea Sheet Holding the Moon in Your Hand .  Using a light source and simple RAFT materials like Styrofoam balls with coffee stir s...