Serving solar baked pizza

 Making pizza ovens doesn’t sound like a typical project for first graders but that’s what several classes at Saddlewood Elementary School did recently.

Completing the task of wrapping the foil around the flap made in the lid are, left to right, Kyle Kitchen, Ashley Cano-Meza and Leticia Nunez-Mojica.

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Michel Northsea

Extension agent John Linhoss explains how the covering of plastic will trap in the box helping to cook the pizza.

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Working in pairs, the first graders turned a pizza delivery box into a solar oven and then made their own individual pizzas, under the watchful eyes of John Linhoss, community sustainability extension agent for Marion County, and their teachers.

Linhoss explained how solar energy worked before any hands-on work was started. He used the example of a car parked in the sun in the lesson. The sunlight comes into the car and is trapped in the car and the heat builds up, he explained.

When he asked the students if they had experienced the heat of a parked car, one child said it happen to her “20 times” and another child answered “everyday.”

The same concept as the hot car was used in making the pizza oven.

Each group of children had a pizza box, a piece of aluminum foil, a sheet of black construction paper, some newspaper and a piece of plastic. A flap, about an inch shorter than the actual lid, had been cut in the top of each box. The flap was covered by foil to serve as reflector and to bounce the sun into the box. The plastic piece was taped to the lid covering up the hole left by making the flap. The plastic covering trapped the heat into box.

The black construction paper was taped to the bottom of the pizza box to line up with the plastic covered opening in the lid to help absorb the heat.  A page from a newspaper was crumbled “hot dog style” and wrapped around the inside of the  bottom of the boxes to serve as insulation to keep the heat inside. 

Linhoss often asked questions of the students as they worked on their projects. Those students with the right answers earned prizes – prizes that also reflected sustainability. Those prizes were five-minute shower timers.

Once the ovens were completed, students made their own pizza with a slice of Italian bread, some tomato sauce and grated cheese. It wasn’t even necessary for Thaddeus Szymanski to make a special request for “no pepperoni” on his slice of pizza because it wasn’t offered.

Each oven was set up in a bright sunny spot and pizza slices were “baked” for 30 minutes.

Linhoss said the presentation was the first one he had made to children but it fulfilled a goal of his.

“I wanted a program that was age appropriate for K-5 on sustainability,” he said adding teaching the youngsters was “the place to start.”

For adults wanting to learn about developing a sustainable lifestyle and work toward a “Sustainable Floridian” certificate, a free information session is coming up May 31, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Register for the session at sustainablefloridians.eventbrite.com or call the extension service at 671-8400.