Engineering Programs

Engineering Programs for all Grade Levels

The below chart lists useful Engineering Programs compiled by the CRS Staff. Note that this chart can be searched and/or sorted by:

Program Type = Assembly, Family Science Night, Field Trip, In-Class Program, Overnight Program, Temporary Exhibit, Service Learning
Provider Name
Resource Link = Name of Program
Provider Location
Abstract = A brief description of the program

Back to our Grade Level Programs & Websites Page

Program Type	Provider Name	Resource Link	Provider Location	Abstract
Field Trip	Hiller Aviation Museum	Aero Design Challenge	San Carlos	Available October 2022 – April 2023 - No Charge The Hiller Aviation Museum’s annual celebration of engineering, the Aero Design Challenge provides middle school students with an immersive, hands-on experience in flight. Students are introduced to the Engineering Design Process, experience different Discovery Station rotations focused on the science of gliders, then work in small groups to design, build, test and improve an elastic-powered glider! Aero Design Challenge is available at no charge through the generosity of the JetBlue Foundation. Availability is limited to schools visiting with 30 or more students, and additional date restrictions may apply.
Virtual Program	Hiller Aviation Museum	Amazing Aircraft	San Carlos	The Hiller Aviation Museum’s most popular hands-on program arrives in your classroom! Designed for classes working at school in a room with their teachers, Amazing Aircraft features an instructor-led exploration of the parts of an airplane using a real Cessna 177 aircraft at the Hiller Aviation Museum, completion of a coloring activity, and construction and test flights of a simple balsa glider. A supply kit including balsa gliders and coloring sheets will be shipped to the address provided on the reservation request seven days prior to the program date. Students should have access to crayons, and teachers should have access to clear or masking tape for minor repairs.
Field Trip	Hiller Aviation Museum	Amazing Aircraft II - Field Trip	San Carlos	Take flight with a rubber-powered airplane! Recommended for older students, Amazing Aircraft II features construction and flight of a larger, propeller powered balsa airplane. Grades 4-8 add control surfaces to guide their airplane’s flight. Launch into the amazing world of aircraft!
Field Trip	Chabot Space and Science Center	Astronaut Training	Oakland	How do astronauts prepare for a mission to outer space? What are they doing on the missions they undertake off-planet? In this workshop, students will explore the different areas that astronauts focus on in their two-year training process, including the effects of microgravity, learning to navigate, and working as a team to complete scientific missions. Through their training at Chabot, students will experience an array of challenges and collaborate in teams to solve them while making connections to the work that astronauts do and how their work impacts humankind. Students will come away from this experience with greater teamwork and communication skills, along with a better understanding of space exploration and its importance to all fields of STEAM.
Field Trip	Bay Area Discovery Museum	Discover-It-Yourself Visits	Sausalito	Exhibitions are research-backed and provide STEM-focused, inquiry-driven experiences that help children develop creativity and creative problem solving skills. Bay Hall Mud Kitchen How Things Work Gumnut Grove Try It Studio Art Studios Lookout Cove BADM Beach and a changing exhibit hall
Field Trip	Chabot Space and Science Center	Energy Engineering	Oakland	Things are heating up, so come on down and shoot the breeze! Where does all of our energy come from? What are some sustainable energy options that we use? How do different types of energy influence life on our planet? In this workshop students will learn about different sources of energy, including wind and solar energy. They will also design wind turbine models and test their ability to produce energy. They will leave this workshop with engineering/experimentation skills and an understanding of renewable and non renewable energy sources and their impact on our environment.
Field Trip	The Tech Interactive	Engineering for Earthquakes - Lab	San Jose	Students learn about earthquakes and engineering principals, then design and construct seismically sound buildings that they put to the test on a shake table simulating seismic waves
Field Trip	Exploratorium	Gallery 2: Tinkering	San Francisco	Think with your hands. Making things and developing ideas by hand helps us construct understanding. Slow down, settle in, and make something personally meaningful—from playful contraptions to surprising connections between mechanical systems and natural phenomena.
Virtual Program	Hiller Aviation Museum	Helicopter Adventure	San Carlos	Perfect for students in a full distance-learning environment, Helicopter Adventure explores the world of vertical flight with an exciting engineering exercise based on paper models. Hiller Aviation Museum staff conduct a Zoom-based virtual tour of a Scorpion helicopter at the Hiller Aviation Museum and lead construction and testing of a simple paper helicopter. Children measure the characteristics of helicopter flight and make predictions on how rotor size will affect helicopter performance. Students need not be in a single location to participate in this program. The Hiller Aviation Museum will provide a printable one-page .pdf file that must be printed for each participating child. Students must have access to scissors to complete the project, but no other supplies or equipment are necessary.
Field Trip	The Walt Disney Family Museum	Imagineering: Creative Problem Solving	San Francisco	Students consider the role of design and engineering in realizing Walt's dreams for Disneyland and tackle a design challenge creatively.
Field Trip	The Lawrence	Ingenuity Challenges Lab	Berkeley	It’s fun to use your ingenuity to solve problems and meet challenges! By approaching things in creative ways, and by applying your own talents and skills, you can discover solutions that are uniquely you.
Field Trip	Children's Creativity Museum	Innovation Challenge	San Francisco	Students are given mystery boxes, and are challenged to create their own inventions or solve a unique problem using the various upcycled materials and tools within.
Field Trip	The Tech Interactive	Innovation Labs: Climb the Cascade	San Jose	In this facilitated design challenge, student engineers design and build a device that delivers a ball onto platforms of different heights. They’ll learn how varying their design changes the motion and path of a payload in this exciting exploration of dynamics.
Field Trip	The Tech Interactive	Innovation Labs: Social Robots	San Jose	Become a robotics engineer by working as a team to create a multi-tasking social robot!
Field Trip	The Tech Interactive	Innovation Labs: Sustainable Cities	San Jose	Student engineers work in teams to design and test their own approach to creating a sustainable city.
In-Class Program	Bay Area Discovery Museum	K-3rd STEAM Workshops: Bridge Builders	Sausalito	Students take on the role of architects, designers and artists as they explore the impact of bridges in our lives. They will be supported to design and build their own bridges, then think about how to improve their next design.
In-Class Program	Bay Area Discovery Museum	K-3rd STEAM Workshops: Fairy Tale Engineering	Sausalito	Student engineers engage directly with Bay Area Discovery Museum’s Think, Make, Try® engineering design process as they work collaboratively to solve problems for beloved fairy tale characters.
Field Trip	Children's Creativity Museum	LEGO Animation	San Francisco	Students will work together to build their own creations, sets, and characters, and then devise their own short movie, storyboarding and learning the ins and outs of stop-motion along the way
Field Trip	Children's Creativity Museum	LEGO Animation	San Francisco	Students will work together to build their own creations, sets, and characters, and then devise their own short movie, storyboarding and learning the ins and outs of stop-motion along the way.
Field Trip	Chabot Space and Science Center	Mars Lander Challenge	Oakland	Perseverance, our most recent Mars rover, was deployed last year in February 2021: but how did it successfully arrive? Come build your own lander to keep our rovers safe on their travels! In this workshop, young engineers will be briefed on the challenges of landing science instruments on Mars. Then, they will take on the task of designing a Mars lander, testing it, and testing again, to see if it can successfully tackle the red planet.
In-Class Program	Habitot Children's Museum	Mobile Museum	Berkeley	Mobile Museum experiences are aimed towards TK – 3rd grade children as one-time or semester-based programs. Habitot will bring teaching artists and makers into schools to lead fun, hands-on art, science and design-oriented activities for 45-90 minute sessions. Teachers and after school programs can select from a number of art and maker-based activities including: Make and Launch a Rocket Gelli Block Printmaking Build and Float a Boat Create a Terrarium Make a Cape Spin Art Bubble Explorations and many more!
Field Trip	The Tech Interactive	Physics of Rollercoasters	San Jose	Students design their own roller coasters to learn how engineers prototype and build machines. They also explore kinetic and potential energy, friction and Newton's 1st and 2nd Laws of Motion.
Assembly	The Lawrence	Science Festivals at Your School	Berkeley	Investigate, experiment, and problem solve, as you explore our festivals’ 10–12 tabletop stations, which feature mobile exhibits designed by the Hall. Festivals are great for groups of 40–150 at your site. Topics Include: "Phenomenal Physics" and "Environmental Detectives: A Murky Mystery" and "Build, Engineer, Invent!" and "Build, Engineer, Invent “Junior”"
Family Science Night	The Lawrence	Science Festivals at Your School	Berkeley	Investigate, experiment, and problem solve, as you explore our festivals’ 10–12 tabletop stations, which feature mobile exhibits designed by the Hall. Festivals are great for groups of 40–150 at your site. Topics Include: "Phenomenal Physics" and "Environmental Detectives: A Murky Mystery" and "Build, Engineer, Invent!" and "Build, Engineer, Invent “Junior”"
Field Trip	The Lawrence	Self-Guided Visit	Berkeley	Take your students to the Lawrence Hall of Science to enjoy the exhibits. Outdoor Nature Lab Animal Explorations Well Played Young Explorers Area Planetarium Hands-on Biotech Forces that Shape the Bay
Field Trip	Exploratorium	Tinkering Studio	San Francisco	A studio workshop for playful invention, investigation, and collaboration The Tinkering Studio is an immersive, active, creative place at the Exploratorium where museum visitors can slow down, become deeply engaged in an investigation of scientific phenomena, and make something—a piece of a collaborative chain reaction—that fully represents their ideas and aesthetic. In the Tinkering Studio, visitors are invited to explore a curiosity-driven exhibit, chat with a featured artist, or investigate a range of phenomena with staff artists, scientists, educators, and others by participating in a collaborative activity. A large, eclectic assortment of materials, tools, and technologies are provided for people to use as they explore and create.
Field Trip	Math Science Nucleus	Tule Ponds - Designing Solutions - Constructed Wetlands	Fremont	Students learn how engineering and restoration have helped enhance Tule Ponds, our water supply system, and the surrounding city. They use microscopes to look at plankton and monitor the performance of the constructed wetland system
Field Trip	Math Science Nucleus	Tule Ponds - Wetland in the City-Designing with Science	Fremont	Tule Ponds is next to an urban center and home to many native animals that have no place to go because of human intervention. Wetland in the City takes you from when it was restored and how we take care of the food web for all the plants and animals to survive. Learn how organisms from microorganism to animals use water in their biological systems.
Field Trip	Bay Area Discovery Museum	Workshop: Fairy Tale Engineering	Sausalito	Student engineers engage directly with Bay Area Discovery Museum’s Think, Make, Try® engineering design process as they work collaboratively to solve problems for beloved fairy tale characters.