For Marin Educators

Free curriculum, kits, and classroom resources.

These are for teachers, not students. Each one is either free classroom material, a program a school can bring in, or a field trip a class can book. A student cannot sign up for any of them alone.

Back to student opportunities

Curriculum and classroom kits

Material you can bring into your own classroom

Civil Air Patrol — Aerospace Education Membership

Teachers can join as Aerospace Education Members to access free STEM kits, aerospace curriculum, and classroom presentations from local CAP volunteers. Kit availability and eligibility rules apply, so check what is currently offered before planning a unit around it. Nearest squadron is at Gnoss Field in Novato.
Free Membership required Marin local
Visit website

Genentech Futurelab+ — Biotech Curriculum

Free biotechnology curriculum with classroom labs and industry-aligned lessons, built for high school teachers. Separate from Genentech's Science Garage and Futurelab scholarships, which serve South San Francisco Unified students only.
Free High school
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Field trips and school programs

Bookable by a teacher or school, not by an individual student

Lawrence Hall of Science — Berkeley

School programs, science festivals, professional development, and classroom instructional materials. They also direct the Amgen Biotech Experience for the Bay Area (see the Genetic Engineering section below). Note: their teen volunteer program has been paused pending a relaunch, so it is currently an educator resource rather than a student opportunity.
Low cost Field trip / PD
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Exploratorium — School Field Trips

700+ hands-on exhibits in San Francisco. School field trips are discounted, and free for Title I schools. Science Snacks and Digital Teaching Boxes are free online teaching materials you can use without visiting.
Discounted / free for Title I Grades 6-12
Visit website

Bay Model Visitor Center — Sausalito

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers site with a 1.5-acre working hydraulic model of the Bay and Delta. Ranger-guided group tours on hydrology, estuaries, tides, and coastal engineering. Free admission. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Free Group tours by arrangement Marin local
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Guided tours of a working national accelerator laboratory, arranged through a school or educational institution rather than booked by individual students. Public lectures are open to everyone.
Free School groups
Visit website

Funding

Real money for classroom equipment. All four verified against the sponsor's own site, August 2026.

AIAA Foundation Classroom Grant

Up to $500 for K-12 teachers, aerospace emphasis. Covers STEM demonstration kits, classroom supplies, and parts for flying objects and robotics. Funds are paid to the school. Catch: you must already be an AIAA Educator Associate member to receive it, so join first. Each school may receive two grants per calendar year.
Up to $500 K-12 teacher Apply late June to late September
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Voya Unsung Heroes Awards

The largest award on this page. Finalists receive $2,000 each, and three of those receive an additional $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. At least one grant goes to each of the 50 states provided a qualified application was received, so your odds as a California applicant are better than the national numbers suggest. Administered by Scholarship America.
$2,000 to $27,000 K-12 educators and staff Deadline late April
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

NAR Extracurricular Activity Grant

Up to ten $500 grants a year for after-school rocketry. Eligible organizations include schools, Scouts, 4-H, museums, and Civil Air Patrol squadrons. Must involve model rockets: water, paper, and straw rockets do not qualify. TARC and Student Launch Initiative teams are not eligible. Recipients agree to have their activity posted on the NAR site.
$500 After-school programs Deadline June 1
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

NAR Robert L. Cannon Award

The classroom counterpart to the grant above. Also up to ten $500 grants, but for rocketry inside a regular course of study rather than an after-school club. Same June 1 deadline, so a school could pursue both: Cannon for the science class, the Activity Grant for the club.
$500 Classroom teachers Deadline June 1
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Classroom activities

Things students actually build or do

LEctenna — U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Students build a working device from a Schottky diode and an LED in a test tube. It harvests ambient 2.4 GHz radio energy and lights the LED, which a phone toggled out of airplane mode is enough to power. NRL designed it for middle and high school, using through-hole parts so soldering helps but is not required. Parts cost a few dollars. Ordering note: NRL warns that Chanzon-branded 1N5711 diodes do not work; they recommend the NTE112.
Parts a few dollars Grades 6-12 Physics / electronics
Optional challenge: improve your design, send NRL a photo, get a patch. That step involves email or social media, so students under 13 need a parent.
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

NOAA Sea to Sky

A searchable database of 1,494 education resources: 1,193 tagged for grades 6-8 and 1,298 for grades 9-12. Filter by grade, subject, resource type, and NGSS Disciplinary Core Idea. Covers ocean, climate, weather, marine life, and engineering. 198 resources are available in Spanish.
Free Grades K-12 NGSS aligned Spanish available
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

MATHCOUNTS Free Resources

Problem of the Week, the School Handbook, MATHCOUNTS Minis videos, practice plans, and every past competition, all free and all built for grades 6-8. You do not need to register a competition team to use any of it. Updated weekly.
Free Grades 6-8 Math
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Genetic engineering in your classroom

Research-grade molecular biology equipment, free, on loan

Amgen Biotech Experience — San Francisco Bay Area

This is the one to know about. ABE lends secondary school teachers research-grade equipment, supplies, curriculum, and professional development at no cost. Students work with micropipettes and gel electrophoresis, digest plasmids, transform bacteria, and produce red fluorescent protein in E. coli. Real recombinant DNA work, in a normal high school biology room.

The Bay Area site is directed by the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley and serves high school biology classrooms across 10 Northern California counties.
Free equipment and reagents High school biology Northern California
How to start: attend one free teacher professional development workshop. After that you can borrow equipment kits and receive all consumables free of charge. ABE does not serve students directly, so a teacher has to be the one to sign up.
Visit website Checked Aug 2026

Know a resource I'm missing?

This page is maintained by a student, and teachers know things students never see. If there is curriculum, a program, or a funding source that belongs here, tell me about it. Grants especially: they change every year and I would rather hear about one early than list it late.

Email navigate@marinSTEMnavigator.org