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Today GB and I made a solar oven and cooked lunch in it. It was really fun, and tasty!

Here’s how you do it.

The cast of characters: One semi-clean pizza box (ours was slightly used), foil, plastic wrap, scissors, x-acto knife, ruler, marker, glue stick, a piece of black construction paper, and a bamboo skewer.

First you have to measure one inch around the top of the pizza box and cut through three of the sides, making a little door. ***Warning ~ this is a parent part, not a kid part***

like this….

Next you have to carefully line the inside of the box with foil, smoothing out all the wrinkles. Wrinkles don’t reflect the sunlight as well as a smooth surface. Use the glue stick to make sure the foil stays put.

Close the box, but open the little door. Now, using the glue stick around the box edges ( I couldn’t get the wrap to cling without it ), cover the opening in the top of the box with the plastic wrap. Try very hard to make it air tight. It doesn’t matter if this part is wrinkled. This keeps the heat in the oven and provides an excellent window.

This is what it looks like open. Now take your piece of construction paper and glue it to the bottom of the box oven.

I added a nice, big thermometer to our oven so we could see the temperature rise.

Now comes the yummy part. Feel free to partake of the raw ingredients.

I covered a paper plate with foil to add further reflection in the oven. Then we assembled our little pizzas.

You know the drill…. One English muffin, pizza sauce, and lots of gooey mozzarella cheese!

GB quite enjoyed this part!

Set your oven outside where the sun will hit the reflector. We put ours on the driveway because the asphalt always gets super-hot. Prop your reflector up with the bamboo skewer. I used the pointy end up, to to pierce into the box, and hold it in place.

Add that yummy pizza…. I used some crumpled foil as a little added insulation, since it was such a roomy oven. When we set the oven outdoors, the thermometer read 90 degrees. Within ten minutes it was up to 145 degrees and that thermometer was HOT! So don’t let the kiddos grab anything while it’s cooking or right after. It took about 25 minutes for it to cook into ooey, gooey yumminess!

Which you can see GB appreciating.

Here is the link I used for making our oven.

I foresee s’mores and nachos being made with our oven in the near future…

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