As teachers we are encouraged to contextualize the mathematics that we teach. In this article, Belinda Beaman explains how she used the weather as a context for developing decimal understanding. We particularly enjoyed reading how the students were involved in estimating.

By means of a simple mathematical model recently developed by the authors (2010 "Phys. Educ." 45 641), the passage of the seasons on the Earth is simulated for arbitrary latitudes, taking into account sunlight attenuation in the atmosphere. The method developed can be used to predict a realistic value of the solar energy input (insolation) that…