LOVINGTON - Students attending a party at Lovington High School didn't seem to notice the guest of honor never made an appearance.

Refusing to let clouds and rain put a damper on their Solar Celebration on Friday, they spread out their blankets in the hallways for a picnic lunch and spent the afternoon visiting nearly a dozen classrooms set up to entertain and educate them about the benefits and dangers of the sun.

"It was really neat to find out what you can do with solar power," said seventh-grader Page McDaniel, 12. "I had a lot of fun."

Inviting the rest of the students in the Lovington School District, the high school was celebrating the recent installation of a small photovoltaic system on the roof. The Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation awarded a $10,000 grant to buy it, and the student council provided $2,500 to install it so Lovington High School could join more than 70 other schools in the Illinois Solar Schools Program.

Other participating schools include Arcola High School, Neoga Junior-Senior High School, Pana Junior High School, Teutopolis Middle School and St. Teresa High School in Decatur.

The foundation sponsors the program to teach the value of renewable energy and energy efficiency by turning school buildings into hands-on science experiments.

Last week, for example, high school physics students helped second-graders make solar s'more cookers out of pizza boxes but were not able to use them to make the treats Friday when the sun was a no-show.

So high school students turned the math room into hot spot by using hot plates from the chemistry lab to make s'mores for each class that visited.

"Welcome to our oven," math/science teacher Linda Casteel said. "The s'mores take 10 to 12 minutes on the hot plates - about the same amount of time they would take in our solar cookers."

Refreshments also included "sun"daes and sun tea, while other classrooms featured ultraviolet bracelets and discussions of the role of sunshine in agriculture and the proper nutrition and hydration for athletic activities in the sun.

Second-grader Hunter Day, 7, liked the Sun Protection Quiz Wheel run by health teacher Derik Eaton because he won a lanyard.

Later, after Casteel urged him and other elementary students to work hard so they would be ready for four years of math in high school, Hunter expressed doubt she would still be teaching the subject when he got there. "It's going to be eight years," he said.

But Casteel assured him she wasn't going anywhere.

Other homemade contraptions on display Friday included a solar rotisserie made out of a coat hanger, aluminum foil and a parabola.

"It's a hot dog cooker," said junior Colin Franklin, 16, "but we haven't tried it out yet."

Many children remarked that the parabola resembled a skate board ramp.

Kindergartner Tatjana Mehmen, 5, thought otherwise and declared, "I think it looks like a music box."

tchurchill@herald-review.com|421-7978