School-Age: The Potato King

We delved into the history of the potato (and the Potato King) this week at our school-age programs.

1. Reading
We read the book "The Potato King" by Christoph Niemann. It is funny and succinct, and is a wonderful read-aloud! The picture book was actually an afterthought. Niemann had originally created the artwork to accompany his article he wrote for the New York Times blog. Not only is it a great story about a piece of history that is not well-known, but the book (and the article) are art. How neat is it that he created potato stamps to tell the story of the Potato King?!

Niemann's book is about King Frederick (Fritz) of Prussia and it is a legend about how he introduced his people to the potato. There are actually several similar tall-tales regarding other royalty in Europe around the same time period. Was it Fritz or was it another royal king or queen? Who knows? But it does make for a very entertaining tale. 

2. Activity
We had a short discussion about who the Potato King was. I showed them a picture of King Frederick and mentioned that the potato was introduced to Europe in the early 1700's. For a vegetable not having been in Europe very long it sure does show up in TONS of European recipes!

This led into a trivia activity about potatoes. Some of the trivia is in the back of Niemann's book. Other trivia were fun facts I found about the potato. For example, did you know there was a tomato/potato hybrid plant called a 'tomtato'? That was a fun one to share with the kids.

3. Craft
For the craft we stamped with potatoes. I cut out different shapes into halved potatoes prior to the programs. 

Then, we laid out paint on the craft tables and the kids could dip the potatoes into the paint and stamp their paper with the potatoes. 

It was perfect to connect the topic back to the book, since Niemann used potato stamps for the artwork in his book (and the kids enjoyed seeing what shapes appeared when they used the stamps). 


Notes:
Maybe the craft was a bit messier than I usually like BUT it was fun and the stamp was the perfect craft to tie-in to the book. And re-purposing our backlog of library newspapers to cover the tables kept everything as neat as we could be...with paint :)!