TURNERS FALLS — Fourth-graders at Sheffield School made s’mores for their last-day-of-school science project on Friday — but not over a camp fire.
With cardboard, aluminum foil and plastic wrap, the students — as a project that was part of their unit on energy — built devices that trap heat from the sun to slow-cook the s’mores. At the beginning of the day, they set up their solar ovens on picnic tables so that the s’mores would be ready to eat 15 minutes before the end of school.
There was some debate among the fourth-graders as to whether using the plastic wrap to seal the cooking chamber would produce a better s’more. Those who supported the idea argued that, if the plastic wrap’s seal were tight enough, it would allow the sunlight to reach the s’more but prevent the heat from escaping. Fourth-grade teacher Laurie White said that using plastic wrap had seemed to work well when she had done the project at her previous school in Alabama, but added that the higher temperatures there likely affected the cooking process, too.
White said the solar-cooked s’mores project was the last of the class’s regular Friday engineering activities. Recently, the class built arcade-style games like hockey and the claw using recyclable materials.
“I’d say 90 percent of it (was recyclable),” said fourth-grader Brody Turner.
They also made models of national landmarks as the final part of a year-long project that combined social studies and science, in which groups of students each followed an interstate road through the country. Fourth-grader Suvannah Cormier learned about the Wyandotte limestone caves in Indiana while following Interstate 90 from the Space Needle in Seattle across the country to Boston, with a detour on Interstate 91 to Turners Falls.
“My daughter cried last year to have to go to school. This year, she cries because she doesn’t want to leave,” said Michelle Simon, whose daughter Maddie Dietz was in White’s fourth-grade class this year. “Mrs. White’s love for teaching made these students want to learn.”