Overview
With their own uniquely designed potato character, primary learners will experience a spud’s journey from the farm to their plate! Through hands-on activities, role play, and expert knowledge from McCain Foods, young learners will discover the true link between supply chains and the foods that we love.
NB Curricular Connections
English Language Arts
- Strand: Reading – Big Idea: Reading Comprehension – Skill Descriptor: Construct meaning from oral stories, read-alouds, and text.
- Strand: Representations – Big Idea: Composition
Explore Your World
- Strand: Play and Playfulness – Big Idea: Imagination and Creativity
- Strand: Well-Being – Big Idea: Belonging and Interconnectedness – Skill Descriptor: Examine how natural resources are connected to us and our environment.
What You’ll Need
- Book – Potatoes for Pirate Pearl (By: Jennifer Concepcion)
- Russet Potatoes – 1 per learner
- Set of googly eye stickers – 2 per learner
- Potato Character Card – 1 per learner (see Learning Activity download)
- Journey Classroom Posters – 1 set per classroom (see downloads)
- Potato Adventure Maps – 1 per learner (see Learning Activity download)
- Supply Chain Expert Badges – 1 per learner (see Learning Activity download)
- Potato Character Cape – 1 per learner (see Learning Activity download)
- String or tape Potato Use Cards – 1 per learner (see Learning Activity download)
- Sandwich Baggies – 1 per learner
- Pencils – 1 per learner
- Colouring Materials – crayons, markers or pencil crayons
- PowerPoint Presentation – The Great Potato Adventure (see downloads)
Instructions
Meet My Potato: Give each learner 1 potato. Have them use their detective skills to investigate their very own potato. Discuss: How does it feel? How does it smell? How does it look? Next, give 2 googly eye stickers to each learner. They will put their eyes onto their character – bringing their potato to LIFE! Lastly, have learners give their potato a name and print it on their Potato Character card. With folding, they can stand these beside their potato.
Read Aloud – Potatoes for Pirate Pearl: Before reading, have learners share what they know about potatoes. Discuss: How do potatoes grow? Looking at the cover, see if learners can make a prediction about the connection between a pirate and a potato. Then, enjoy the story!
Real-Life Potato Adventures: Explain: Now that we know how potatoes grow, how do potatoes get from the farm to our plates? Use slides 2-7 to follow the real-life adventures of a McCain Potato from their farms to storage sheds to factories to grocery stores! Be sure to have students talk about what they know about each leg of the journey.
My Potato Adventure: Using the five Journey Classroom Posters, place these around your room. Have learners pick up their Potato Character. Using the printable capes, have learners decorate their cape with colouring materials. Simply tape on, or tie on, their cape to their potato for their journey through the Great Supply Chain – with actions at each stop.
Farm – pretend to be deep in dirt, spin through the tillers, and ride down the conveyor belts
Storage Shed – pretend to meet other potato friends, stay cool, and be a little cramped and then tipped into a potato truck
Factory – pretend to ride to the factory and then arrive to enjoy a nice, warm bath and dry off, people’s hands will inspect you and then ride down the conveyor belt into a bag with friends
Delivery Trucks – twist and turn, bop up and down bumpy roads and then STOP (freeze!) and back the BEEP! BEEP! backing up sound of a transport truck to the grocery store where workers put you on a display shelf
Grocery Store – Sit pretty on the shelf with your best smile! Be picked up and purchased by hungry customers!
Discuss: A supply chain is the journey of a material – from where it begins to when it ends in the hands of a customer. Thinking of our adventurous potatoes, what is its supply chain? Have learners point the order using the posters. Will the supply chain for potatoes only happen once? Or does it happen over and over again? How many people and workers are involved in the potato supply chain?
The Great Potato Adventure Supply Chain Map: Using the map provided, with pencils, have students create the correct path that their potato would take to complete their supply chain adventure!
Wrap-Up & Discussion: Ask learners with Slide 8: Why are supply chains important? Once learners have shared their learning, pass out a Supply Chain Expert Badge to each one, celebrating all their work today. Give each learner a sandwich-sized plastic baggie to take their potato character home. Insert 1 potato card provided below on ideas on how to best use this potato character.
Extension Ideas
- Have learners write stories of their Potato Character’s Adventure, referring to their Supply Chain Map.
- Character Measurements – using non-standard units, have learners measure the length, the height, and the weight of their potatoes. Whose character is the longest, the shortest, the heaviest, the lightest, the most round, etc.?
- Baked Potato Party – put your potatoes together and have learners test out a variety of toppings to try on their baked potato (cheese, butter, chives, sour cream, etc.). Discuss the difference in texture between an uncooked potato and a baked potato.
- Supply Chains – Can you think of more? What other foods go on adventures like the potato? Use plastic chain links and cue cards to create other food supply chains.
- Potato Puppet Skits – using string, pieces of fabric, tape, construction paper, etc. have learners continue to decorate their potato characters and act out skits with puppet theatres.
Reflection Activity
Please see the attached PDF for several choices on how you and your learners can reflect upon today’s activity.
Acknowledgements
- Miriam-Webster, Manufacturer definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manufacture, 2024.
- McCain Foods, Photographs, 2024.
A SPECIAL THANKS to Lana McCarthy, of ASD-W’s Townsview School and her grade 2 class for piloting this activity in the Winter of 2025.
