On Friday June 8th, we joined the Fort McMurray Boys and Girls Club for a day at the park. We did environmental and sustainability related activities. Students from the Summer Aboriginal Student program at Suncor Energy joined us and helped teach the students about local plants with a scavenger hunt through the park, and we made solar ovens to teach about sustainable energy!

We started off by talking to the students a little bit about solar energy and how we can use the sustainable energy from the sun for all sorts of things, including cooking food! We worked with the kids to complete a solar oven activity, discussing how the shiny surface of the foil will reflect heat into our oven, and the black paper will absorb the heat and warm the air in the oven. The plastic wrap will create a greenhouse effect to trap that warm air in the oven and cook our food! For this activity we made some yummy s’mores!

While the s’mores were cooking in the sun, we used that time to explore the park on a little scavenger hunt! The students had to see how many local plants they could find! We collected leaves from different plants like spruce, poplar, dogwood and the Alberta wild rose!

After the hunt, we went back to check on our solar ovens. The s’mores were nice and melty after absorbing all that heat from the sun. The kids were able to enjoy the spoils! Yum!

Our volunteers had a bunch of fun, and special thanks to the Suncor Aboriginal Summer Students for coming to help us out!