LEARNING ACTIVITY
Creating your own potato chips: growing
Category: Food Production
Climate Region: Arid | Temperate | Tropical
State or Territory: ACT | NSW | NT | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA
Age Range: 7-13

Miss Gorman knew the Junior Landcare group really enjoyed the activity grow your own pizza. Before they could make the pizza, the children learnt about where the ingredients came from and how long they took to grow, and how far they needed to travel before they arrived at a supermarket.

The Junior Landcare group wanted to learn more about where their food comes from, but this time on the menu the food was hot chips! Like pizza, some families made hot chips from scratch, while others would buy them from a takeaway shop or frozen chips from the supermarket.

Miss Gorman asked the children “If you were going to grow, manufacture and market your own brand of hot chips, what would you need to know?”

Subsequently, Miss Gorman decided to empower the group to make their own hot chips The children will learn to grow their own potato themselves and learn the process of making hot chips from scratch!

ACTIVITY OVERVIEW

We’re going to investigate food production! In this activity we will be growing potatoes and investigating their life cycles and growing needs.

This learning activity is the first part of a sequence of 3 individual learning activities focused on creating your own potato chips. The order of these learning activities are: growing, cooking, and marketing.

Outcomes

For children to:

  • plan a crop
  • plant a food crop
  • follow the progress of their crop
  • study the life cycle and growing needs of a crop
  • utilise knowledge about planting food crops from other Junior Landcare activities
  • understand that food production takes planning and time.
SEASONAL NOTES

This activity can be undertaken at any time of year, however where you live will affect your ability to grow potatoes. Tropical zones may not be a good location to grow potatoes, so we suggest substituting these with sweet potatoes instead.

Consult with your local garden centre or use a guide, such as the Gardenate app or use the Gardenate website to help determine the timing, spacing and other elements required for your climate zone.

Dud you know?

Potatoes are vegetables but they contain a lot of starch (carbohydrates) that make them more like rice, pasta and bread in terms of nutrition.

Did you know?

The potato is a root vegetable native to the Americas and originated in modern-day Peru. They are starchy tuber of the plant Solanum tuberosum.

Did you know?

Potatoes are 80% water when freshly harvested.

Did you know?

Potatoes are best stored in cool, dark, dry places.

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Your feedback will help Landcare Australia improve the activities in the Junior Landcare Learning Centre.

Why not try one of our other Junior Landcare learning activities?

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