Second, Third-Graders Enjoy Solarbration at MICDS

Last Wednesday was a beautiful, clear and moderately hot day in St. Louis. The kind of day when everyone wants to be outside for a leisurely stroll.

That was good news for the lower school students at Mary Institute and County Day School in Ladue.

No, there were no surprise visits from hot air balloons that day. Rather, students in grades two and three were having a "Solarbration."

Students in those classes have been immersed in a unit the past couple of weeks on solar cooking. They have been making observations about sun and shadow, heat and light and the transfer of energy. Their assignment was to build solar cookers and to cook hotdogs on the sidewalk for a lower school lunch.

Bob Shaw is the chairman of the science department at MICDS and teaches science to lower school students, kindergarten through the sixth grade.

“We’ve been doing projects like this off an on since 2008. We like to alternate things, so different students have different experiences,” Shaw said.

“This was a two-week unit, and our students began by doing a lot of drawing and sketching what they thought their cookers might look like,” he said.

The requirements were that all solar cookers must be able to heat a minimum of three hotdogs to a maximum of 76˚C/170˚F using energy transferred directly from the sunlight, using no fossil fuels. All this had to be done by the time second-graders showed up for a picnic lunch on the lawn at 11 a.m.

Food service personnel from the Beasley School dining staff provided all of the support for this project, including latex gloves for the children to wear while handling the  product. Oscar Meyer wieners got kicked to the curb. All the dogs were made from turkey products.

Students showed their proficiency with the instructional aspects of the unit.

For example, when Shaw asked, "What is light?"

Alli responded, ”Sun is light.”

"How long does it take for the earth to rotate around the sun?" he asked.

Morgan responded, “Almost 365 days each year.”

"How do we know the sun is rising?" Shaw asked.

Emma said, “Because the Earth is moving.”

Everyone dined on the grass. Both teachers and students enjoyed fruit, drinks, chips and of course well-cooked solar dogs. Mother Nature provided the perfect setting for this science unit.

Below are websites to learn more about solar cooking.

Principles of Solar Cooker Design http://solarcooking.org/sbcdes.htm
Pizza BoxCooker www.nmsea.org/Curriculum/4_6/pizza_box_oven/pizza_box_ovens.htm
Box Cooker http://solarcooking.org/plans/
Sample Hot Dog Cooker www.boyslife.org/hobbies-projects/projects/4902/make-a-solar-hot-dog-cooker/
Pringles Can Cooker http://www.energywhiz.com/experiments/solar_oven.htm