William had science homework last night about fruit and veg, and which part of the plant one eats (incidentally, does anybody know what the part of sweetcorn that we eat is called? The kernel? The seed?). We all joined in with the debate, and it was quite interesting. It also involved looking through a seed catalogue, and extracting various information, and I discovered that William’s knowledge of fruit and veg is really quite good (considerably better than his willingness to try eating some of them, I might add!)
Anyway, this tied in with some rather shocking statistics that I’d been reading recently, which revealed:
- 1 in 10 children aged 7 to 11 think chickens lay potatoes (WTF?!)
- 1 in 5 kids have no idea that potatoes are grown in the ground
- 1 in 5 kids didn’t realise that chips are made from potatoes.
Scary stuff, huh? So, McCain (the oven chip people) have put together a national touring roadshow called The Potato Story, which is aiming to plug the gaps in kids’ food knowledge. The roadshow bus has been travelling around the UK visiting primary schools, and is currently nearing the end of its fifth tour, teaching kids in a fun and interactive way about food provenance.
I showed Will the website, and he found some of the info in the kids section really useful, all about plant lifecycles, which ties in very well with his science this term.
Let’s hope The Potato Story works!
