The installation of our amazing Cob Oven has started. Please find our diary of the process below:
Thursday
0920 – Whole school assembly. Matthew (The Cob Oven Man) shared the plans with the children and gave them a challenge to design their cob oven. It will take two days to make the base so we need our designs completed by Monday.
1000 – P4 started the journey of building the base but first had to decide where the oven door would be. Matthew discussed that the sun rises from the East and sets in the West. Wind comes from the West so we do not want out oven door facing the West as it could blow out our flame. We want the back of the oven facing West.
P4 then measured out the base of our oven and placed the glass bottles on. The glass bottles will trap a layer of air for the oven that will act as insulation under the hot oven.
We then started to mix together our cob – sharp sand, clay and water. Iain Lamont asked “How do you make clay?” and learned that clay is dug up from the ground.
1100 – P1 came out and started filling the gaps between the glass bottles with saw dust. Leah explained to the group that “saw dust comes out when you saw wood.” The saw dust creates more inssulation filling all the holes and gaps with saw dust. Emily said that “we are tucking it all in,” as she worked hard to press the sawdust between the gaps.
“Can we put our feet in that?” asked Noah.
We then added cob to it to stick it all together. Harrison said “it feels so hard and wet.” He then said “it will dry out and it will keep the bottles in their place.”
1300 – P2 are building the mould using damp sand. Matthew really had brought the beach to us … sand, sunshine and water and we built a sandcastle.
“It looks like Mount Everest” – Christopher Convery
Day 3 – P6/7, P4 and nursery
Building continues. Primary 6/7 really put their hands into the building of the oven. It was very messy but fun. All of P6/7 added to the structure of our cob oven, building more and more layers around the mould.
“We had to put the mixture of cob on top of the previous layer and use our finders to press it down. We were not to spread the cob mixture down as this would squeeze the water out of it making it dry.” Zara
Primary 4
“It looks different from the oven at home, it has no buttons.” Rory
Zakir “It doesn’t have electricity!”
Day 4 – Primary 7
Primary 7 started out first thing today and noticed that the oven has some slight damage to it due to the heavy rain overnight. We learned that the cob oven is a little vulnerable and we need to protect it from the rain. A bag over our cob oven will protect it.
“We all loved building the oven and can’t wait to taste our pizza.”
“If I ever become a billionaire I’m going to build my house out of this!”
Primary 1b has a very important job of putting on the last cob and finishing off the very top of our oven. What a great job they have done.
Day 5 – Pizza tasting day. We all loved eating the pizza. It tasted delicious and we enjoyed counting down the seconds it takes to cook our pizza – only 90 seconds!
