Engineering - Solar Ovens

Over the past few weeks the children and I have been learning about how engineers solve problems.

The engineering process that your children should be familiar with:

IMAGINE - What would the world be like if we used less power?  What could we do to use less power and energy?  Maybe we could use the power from the sun to make a solar oven?

PLAN - What materials will be useful?  What impact will these materials have on the environment?  Write down some materials we could use.  Draw a picture of what it could look like.

CREATE - Make it.

TEST - Try it out.  Write down the results.  Analyze and discuss.

IMPROVE - What could I do differently to make it work better next time?

After planning their design, children went about creating their solar oven. 

Team work was important.

Everyone had a job to do.

Putting the plan into action.

Make it the best you can.

A few finishing touches.

It is easy for the children to be focused on a project like this one.

Finding some material.  Think about the impact on the environment.

Taking shape.

Let's use the sun to make our ovens as hot as possible.

Warming up!

Recording results.

Getting the angles right.

Discussing the results and thinking about how we can make it better.