Our Science books were late in coming to our school.  So, we took matters into our own hands and I grabbed out a bunch of stuff on Solar cookers and had all the kids make their own.  We did activities and read about convection, conduction and radiant energy.  We watched a video on the sun.  One teacher even did experiements on insulation with her class.  The kids learned a lot.

Today we went outside into 98 degree temps (that is cool for us) and cooked our own lunches.  The kids loved it.  However, we had a huge recycled tire fire only 2 miles from our school and we had to cook and run (so to speak).  There was also a huge wind that blew some of the cookers over and sent hot dogs rolling.  The kids?  They wanted to just wiped them off and eat them anyway.  Ewwww!  We had extra so we passed them around to the ones who "lost" their hotdogs.  The kids brought their own lunches and cooked them.  They thought they were hot stuff.

Oddly enough, the best cookers were the simplest.  The fastest one was a pizza box that had foil laid on the bottom with the dogs setting on it.  Unbelievable.  One student made one with a place to hold her condiments.  Another had a place to warm the hot dog buns.  The kids were amazingly creative.  It was a great day.