Cooking With Solar Energy - A Hands-on Project for Students

Climate.gov is a good place for teachers to find videos, interactive activities, and lesson plans for teaching about climates and climate change. One of the teaching activities that I found on Climate.gov I think elementary, middle, and high school students could enjoy is making a solar oven (link opens a PDF). The Making a Solar Oven PDF includes directions for building your solar oven and tips for cooking in it. You and your students can build a solar oven using materials that are commonly found in schools, homes, and grocery stores.

Applications for Education
Making a solar oven and baking some cookies in it could be a great way to get students excited to learn about solar energy. At the middle school and high school levels you could have students experiment with modifications of the original design to see if they can increase or decrease temperatures and cooking times in their solar ovens.