A St. Patrick's Potato Day Unit

Up with Spuds!!!

Today the luck 'o the Irish smiles upon you! You have found a fun unit to incorporate into your St. Patty's Day fun! Here are several ideas to transform a spud into a teaching material that will engage and entertain your students on a blustery March day!

Cut out a large potato out of brown bulletin board paper. I added some "eyes" with a black marker and a little sprout peeking out from the tough potato skin. Enlist the children in brainstorming a list of potato foods and write the suggestions on the potato.

Provide each student with a white potato shape and a slightly larger brown potato shape on paper. I drew the potato shape four to a page and ran them off on the copier on plain paper and then enlarged them slightly on brown construction paper. Instruct each student to draw their favorite potato food on the white potato. Cut out both potato shapes and glue the white one to the brown one. When everyone is finished meet in a group and build a graph to show favorite potato foods. Have students discuss what information they can learn from the graph using words such as more, less, and equal. Encourage the kids to count the various answers. We also did some addition by adding two different kinds of potato foods together. I recorded all their answers on the graph. Display the graph with the potato foods that were brainstormed earlier.

Estimate potato weight. Choose a potato and ask the class to compare it to another object. We chose our current traveling mascot, Beady Bear from Boston, MA. Provide the children with a picture of a balance scale with one side tipped up and one side down. Have the children draw the objects in the scale they way they think it will turn out. Then weigh the objects and check the prediction. We sorted our estimates into two categories, displayed them on a large blue piece of bulletin board paper and added a photo of "Beady's weigh in" to the chart for fun.

Stamp out potato print patterns! Cut several potatoes in half and use a knife to carefully cut designs into the potato. I cut hat shapes, three and four leaf clovers, diamonds and left some round to be "gold". Provide long strips of paper and green and gold stamp pads (or paint). Have students pick some St. Patty's Day icons and stamp a pattern.

Read aloud Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potato by Tomie DePaola. Discuss the story.

Make leprechaun masks. The pattern that I used was from Mailbox Magazine, but it would be easy to draw. Run off leprechaun hats on green construction paper. Run off a two inch thick "U-shape" on orange paper the same width as the bottom of the hat. Student cut out both shapes. Provide various craft materials to decorate the leprechaun hat with. Instruct the students to cut "fringe" around the bottom of the orange U. Then glue the orange U to the brim of the hat. Use more construction paper to make strips for a headband. Staple so that it fits around the students' heads.

Discuss what part of a plant the potato is. Some children may be surprised to discover that it is a root! Explain that potatoes grow underground and that they have to be dug up. Show the children the "eyes" on the potato. That is where little potato sprouts will begin to grow. Poke several toothpicks into a potato so that it can be suspened into a bowl of water. The children will enjoy seeing the sprouts emerge.

Read the story Tops and Bottoms (I don't know the author off hand) to the kids. This is a really cute story involving a lazy bear and a clever rabbit. Neat illustrations will show the kids how we use the different parts of different kinds of plants. This story even has enough similarities to Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potato that you could make a Venn diagram and compare and contrast them.

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