Our class had a lot of fun and learned a lot by doing this project.

We took the date and split it up so we could graph all the data. Each small group did a section of the bar graph. Then we put them all together on the white board and drew a line across where the equator would be. For the amount of daylight it was easy to see the pattern that the further north the class, the more hours of daylight they got. When we studied the graph of the temperature it wasn't quite as clear. We were able to tell the the higher temperatures were around the equator and that the temperatures were lower as the locations were further north or further south from the equator. We also discussed other things that affect temperature such as elevation and the nearness of a large body of water.

We were doing a weather and solar energy unit. We also made use of our direct rays of sunlight by building solar box-cookers in which we cooked cookies, pizza, bagel bites, taquitos and so on. We learned about how solar cookers can help people who live in areas around the equator where it is hard to find wood for them to use for cooking or pasteurizing water but they have plenty of sunlight! This is a really good web site for information about this if anyone is interested. http://www.solarcooking.org/sci.htm

We are sorry we did not get pictures posted and were not more active in the discussion area, although we did try to reply to several letters. Next year our teacher thinks she will be able to do a much better job of doing more activities and submitting more information!

This teacher is also very interested in communicating with someone who might want to set up epals with a fifth grade class for next year.

Thanks for the opportunity to be involved in this great project.

E-mail: syost@kyrene.org