That's My Potato

Time:       45 minutes (depending on no. of participants)

Materials:  One potato for each person taking part.

        At the beginning of the exercise, show everyone your bucket or bowl of potatoes.  They all look the same: just like potatoes, in fact.

        Then give each person a potato.  Ask them to study it for 2 minutes and look for distinguishing features (green marks, 'freckles', shape, etc.).          Once they have looked at it closely, they should give their potato a name and make up a story about the potato.

• what does it do in its spare time
• what it likes and dislikes
• how old it is
• whether it likes its relations and so on

        Once all the stories have been told, all the potatoes are put into a bag or bucket and jumbled up.  The potatoes are then spread out on to a table and the participants have to come and claim their own particular potato.

        At this stage, participants are very keen to find their own potato and they examine the potatoes very carefully, rejecting those that 'don't look like mine.'
 

• Ask the students what they have learned during this exercise
• Ask the students how they think this exercise applies to bullying
• Have they learned anything which could help them understand why people might bully those who are different from them?

How does this exercise help us to understand that labelling people can be misleading?

It is the small differences that make people individual but they are till all people - all members of the human race.  Once you take the time to look at someone and really get to know them, you can see that person is not the same as everyone else.  People, like potatoes, are not 'all the same' and differences are no reason to bully anyone - in fact, we should encourage and value differences.

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Reproduced with kind permission from Kidscape

Updated: 13 October 2003