Potato
10 FREE Resources Exploring “Potatoes”
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, since September 4, 2011, Peter Glazebrook from the UK is still holding the record of having grown the heaviest potato in the world. The potato weighed in at 10 pounds 14 ounces. That’s a lot of spud for one potato! An even crazier potato number was from an article in Adweek called, “Lay’s Chips Spotlights Potato Farmers” where it shared that Frito Lay bought more than 2 billion pounds of potatoes from farmers in the United States in 2008. Times sure have changed since the Great Depression, when families depended heavily on the ease of potatoes, the growing and winter storage, to sustain their families from hunger.
The potato is the next topic in the Farmers’ Market series of exploration. If you have been following this series, you know we have researched and gathered a collection of free resources for you to explore with your children and students. We have included book recommendations, videos, and free printables.
Books and Potatoes
There are many children’s books on the topic of potatoes. Here are three that I found to have a bit of diversity in history. It is so important to find out the direction of the students interest when exploring any topic. We can plan an entire lesson for kids, but if they are bored everyone’s time is wasted. The books here are linked to an online reading for your viewing. My goal is to have a huge collection of Read With Me Books on my YouTube Channel. In the meantime I will have some guest readers. The three books I chose are The Enormous Potato, Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression and Mr. Crum’s Potato Predicament.
The Enormous Potato
The Enormous Potato is an old folktale that has been around for a long time. Its lesson is about how when we all pull together we can accomplish a goal. In this case, it is helping the farmer pull the enormous potato from the ground. Retold by Aubrey Davis and published in 1997, it is one of those books that will be remembered, especially if you study potatoes.
Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression
Next, Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression is a book about a family and the Great Depression. This is how the potato had become somewhat of the hero for the survival of one the family during the 1930s.
Mr. Crum’s Potato Predicament
Lastly, I just love Mr. Crum’s Potato Predicament and the story of how the potato chip was invented. Mr. Crum and the story of potato chip history is fun! Kids will like this book and if you follow up with making potato chips with kids (see video below) it will be a good memory for years, perhaps even a tradition to be passed on from generation to generation.
Video Resources
There are so many different things that can be made with potatoes. There are boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, baked, fried, French fries, hash browns, potato pancakes, scalloped potatoes, potato soup or salad, and so much more. These potato videos will help guide an investigation towards potato chips. We all love potato chips and I feel all these potato resources will blend well together and make for a fun learning experience about potatoes.
The first video is an excellent overview of how potatoes are grown. Kids will find this video entertaining, it has George the Farmer singing and dancing, too. Although, the video is filmed in Australia it is relevant to all modern day potato harvesting.
If you have not met Jessi and Squeaks you are in for a treat. This is one of my favorite science shows for kids. SciShow Kids will be in many of my posts as their information is perfect for young learners. In this episode, “Grow Your Own Potatoes”, they teach all about potatoes as they demonstrate how to grow a potato. You can use the free printable from “Paddy Potato” (see additional resources below) to conduct this science experiment with your class or at home with your children.
Next is a video by The Dr. Bincos Show, “Invention of the Potato Chip.” This is an entertaining cartoon documentary about the story of George Crum. If you have already read the book, try showing this a few days later, and it will reinforce the historical value of the invention of the potato chip.
Video pick number four, “How It’s Made: Potato Chips” is how mass produced potato chips are made. Here is where those 2 billion pounds of potatoes are washed, cut, fried and bagged for our snacking pleasure.
And finally, the last video is cooking with kids and making mashed potatoes. This video can encourage kids in the kitchen but also stressed cooking safety!
Additional FREE Resources
The last few resources are from some of my peers at Teacher Pay Teacher. Even if you are not a traditional classroom teacher, any caregiver can download free and/or purchase these teacher created resources from the TpT website.
This free resource was created for St. Patrick’s Day. However, I feel it is great to use anytime of the year. It is a complete potato project and will go perfectly with the other resources that are included in this post. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this free resource for young learners.
Look how cute this resource is for closing the potato investigation, or for any topic. It is an editable file so you can use this for anything!
If you like the free resources please consider following these teacher creators, they are always developing new and cool things, for you and I, to use with young learners. The following is a freebie sample to my Farmers’ Market packet.
Thank you for taking the time to read and explore my collection of free potato resources. These can be used with my Farmer’s Market Poetry Journal packet. The packet contains 10 original poems and clip art for young learners to color or illustrate into their poetry journals.
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