Talk about fun for the whole family.
And it's a great way to learn about books. And it shows how much fun kids can have when they do a project JUST for fun.
We're talking about spuds. Potato art. Like Mr. Potato Head with real potatoes. It's a "wow" first-year event at Williamsburg Elementary School, aimed at celebrating reading, and a wildly creative success story.
"Oh my goodness, we had no idea," said Williamsburg Elementary School librarian Meredith Carlson. "We were completely blown away by how many participated and how creative they were."
The idea was born from a list-serve conversation Carlson had with a librarian from Texas. You'd think it would have been from Idaho or Ireland, although Texas tubers account for more of the harvest in the Lone-Star State than one might think.
What was harvested at Williamsburg was imagination and family fun.
"This is our first time ever," Carlson said. "We sent flyers home and made announcements and just talked it up. And we had tremendous participation. I don’t know the exact percentage of kids who participated, but if you just walk down the hall, you’ll see it was a lot."
There were so many, in fact, that Geneva Patch is running two photo galleries—one here and one tomorrow—to showcase the students' work.
"Some of them are completely kid-created. And then you can just tell by looking at them that we did have some parent participation," Carlson said.
Two quick sidebar stories that illustrate the the success.
"We did have one family who said, 'Please don’t put ours in the competition because we did it as a family.' It was adorable, and then they donated the book to the library."
The book was The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The Newcome family made the donation. Photos of their work are here.
The second story comes from second-grader Jack Yingst, whose Owl Babies potato earned him a top-three finish in the competition.
"It's a story my mom told me and my brother and sister when we were young," he said. "Since there were three of us then, she would make our names in place of their names when she'd read to us. Now there are four of us, so she can't do that any more."
Jack's siblings are Mark, Anna and Sam.
Editor's note: This is the first of two photo galleries on the potato competition. The second is schedule to run Thursday. The Geneva School District prefers that we do not use last names in photos on the website. If parents would like their son's or daughter's last name included in the article, please contact Rick Nagel at 630-886-0792 or rickn@patch.com.
