We made our pizza box solar ovens last night. We plan to build a better solar oven in the future if we have the time. This one is easy enough for children to do and didn't take much time. I cut out the window in the top of the box (oven). The children covered the box with glue and added the foil all over the inside.
Below is pizza box with foil. It still needed plastic over window, stick to hold it open and black paper in bottom.
We used a craft stick to hold the top open. We taped oven cooking bags to cover our window to hold in the heat. We put a piece of black paper in the bottom of both boxes. We didn't get a super hot oven but we did easily get 150 with out trying. The temp outside my house is in the mid 80's today. Once we added a black baking dish (toaster oven pan) we quickly got a temp of over 250 inside our oven. Today is HOT and sunny so it was a wonderful time to use our solar ovens.This is T. sitting in the yard with our ovens.
Putting together the smores so we have something to cook in our ovens.
They had to eat the extra pieces. LOL!
Below are the only pictures of the thermometers I could get to show up. It was so hot, and sunny today it made getting pictures of inside the ovens HARD! The foil reflected the light and messed up most of my pictures. Once food was inside the ovens we had moisture fogging it up even more. This picture was taken after I took out the black paper and addeded the black baking pan in the oven (medium pizza box). The temp did go up to 250 but the pictures didn't turn out to show it.
The picture below shows the temp. in the smaller oven (small pizza box) this is the one with black paper in the bottom and no metal pan. We tried adding more foil and cardboard around this oven but nothing we did made it get much hotter. We could have put a black metal pan in but we didn't have one small enough to fit in this small box. Everything we did kept the temp. around 175.
D. poured and served the "tea" for us.
This is how they turned out.
MMMMmmmmm.....They tasted good!! I know you all know I would say that. What else would a very pregnant person craving chocolate say???? LOL!
Look even T. who doesn't like chocolate liked them. He ate 2 smores. I am sure that is because he built the oven we cooked them in.
We found that adding a black metal pan makes a BIG difference! We used a black baking pan (toaster oven size) that we already had. The temp went up fast after adding that. The smaller pizza box we put a piece of black construction paper in the bottom (no black pan) and we couldn't get the temp much above 175. Now I think 175 is still hot enough to melt smores and make mini pizzas but it was not as efficient as the other oven we had the metal pan inside.Below is a picture of our pizza the children made for lunch in the oven. T. then went out and tried hotdogs. He said his hot dog turned out perfect. I didn' t get to check. D. was cranky and needed a nap.
This is a picture from last night. D. got tired of helping us make solar ovens. She went off to play. I was taking pictures of the ovens and I looked up to see D. balancing a stack of checkers on her head. She had a tall stack (over 6 of them) on her head but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. This is her with just 2 on top. Silly girl!
2 comments:
I love the solar oven. I really like how D is there and doing school with you and T. She is really learning alot as you teach T. My dd would have loved to do tea with her. My dd ends up dumping it on the table and sucking the water off the table. LOL It looks like you are having so much fun. THAT is what school SHOULD be.
Thanks! I have to admit if I knew what to do with D. when T. and I are doing things she wouldn't be as involved. She wants to do what we are doing! The only way I can do stuff with T is to include D. It takes a bit longer but she seems to be learning with us. I wonder what my day will look like next month when I add a baby into our crazy days!
Don't feel bad D. will dump water on the table then suck it up also! She knew it was snack time and the rule with pouring is once she dumps it she has to let someone else pour it. She likes being the one to pour so she doesn't dump it all over until she gets tired of doing it. When that happens we just take it away and tell her she can have it later (at our next snack time).
I think it would be wonderful if our little girls could have a tea party together someday!
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