Posts Tagged "learning"

The Potato Story

Posted by cafebebemama on Sep 26, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

McCain, the UK’s major potato company (they make lovely chips!), is working to extend their national roadshow programme in a bid to close the food knowledge gap of UK kids.  In their “Food for Thought” survey of 1500 children between ages 7 and 11, taken in February 2009, McCain discovered the following nuggets of information:

• 1 in 10 children aged 7-11 think chickens lay potatoes
• 1 in 5 have no idea that potatoes are grown in the ground
• 1 in 5 didn’t realise that chips are made from the humble spud

This is a bit more than a little distressing!  I remember watching Jamie Oliver in his School Dinners Campaign a couple years back (I know…it’s controversial!) and the kids that he was trying to help had no clue what most vegetables looked like or what they were called.  Granted, they were in a rather impoverished part of the country but they didn’t know what broccoli was!  My previous post focused on the Tesco site, Greener Living, and touched on the idea of food provenance.  How can we let our children grow up not knowing where potatoes come from?  Potatoes are lovely!  Chip form is my most favourite as is evidenced by my expanding waistline!

McCain, lovely maker of all things potato, are embarking on a major project: The Potato Story.  And because I believe in educating children, particularly about where their food comes from and to have an appreciation for the process, I am giving The Potato Story a little plug.  The website is lovely, educational and fun and I really admire McCain for kitting out a very cool potato double-decker bus and chugging it around the country to help our uneducated youth.  The Potato Bus has already been travelling across the country, visiting over 130 UK Primary schools and has, to date, reached out to more than 17,400 primary school students.  The Potato Story aims to plug kids’ food knowledge gap.  Now a part of a wider campaign by McCain called “It’s all good”, The Potato Story highlights the company’s long term commitment to educating kids on food provenance and is set to visit around 30 schools throughout September to November of this year.  So, if you’re lucky, a giant potato plastered double-decker bus will pull up into your child’s school car park and your child will have the experience of seeing, first-hand, where potatoes really do come from.  The bus also provides curriculum-aligned lesson plans for teachers to use in class.  What more could you ask for from a Potato Bus??

The lovely and talented Kim Hong, at Fleishman Hillard, sent us some brilliant information about The Potato Story, including a packet of potato seeds which will be actively “digga digga” by Little Miss and Daddy when the season is right.  Little Miss also has some new gardening tools to be the next great gardener.  Thanks Kim, Little Miss will have the dirt flying in your honour.  I’ll send you her dirty clothes!  I’m really excited, though, to see Little Miss learning about gardening and can’t wait for next spring/summer because I promise you, there will be vegetables growing in this household.  Little Miss is brilliant at picking and liquidising tomatoes at her Nanny & Grandad’s; can’t wait to have it happen here.  Although Little Miss is not old enough to see the Potato Bus, it is one of my silent promises to her; that I will do my very best by her and part of that is learning about the world around her and having a greater appreciation for it.  She doesn’t know that wasps are nasty or that some flowers are poisonous or that sometimes it’s not just dirt that she’s “digga digga-ing”, it just might be some cat poo.  All she knows is that she loves being outside, seeing nature and being a part of it.  I’ll try to keep my obsessions in check and let her explore and learn.  And when it’s rainy, we’ll grab our Crayola Crayons and colour some pictures of what vegetables are until we can learn some more.  Go check out The Potato Story and learn a bit about potatoes!  I guarantee, you won’t be disappointed.

For those of you who are Americans and are old enough to remember the first President George Bush and his Vice President, Dan Quayle, you will laugh at this one:  ever since Dan Quayle screwed up spelling the word POTATO (he spelled it POTATOE), I have constantly checked myself anytime I wrote the word POTATO!  Imagine how much checking I have just been doing.  I think I’m OK though…please let me know if you spot any POTATOES!

Wonder if the fare is "cheap as chips"! HA!