Learning Through Play with Mr Potato Head

I spy with my little eye…a surprise in my basket! Do you want to see what it is? Let's have a look. Yes…here's his head. Here's his hat. You probably guessed it…it's Mr. Potato Head. It’s one of my favorite teaching tools that I've used in the classroom and in the therapy space for the past 13 years. Now, why is this my favorite? You could literally teach hundreds of things with this one toy. It is really versatile and it's fun. There's a lot of different parts where you could target different learning skills, and I'm going to show you some of them that pertain to language and social interaction now. 

Typically when I have my Mr. Potato Head I'll have it in a box or a basket. I think it kind of just adds a little bit of mystery to whatever activity that we're doing. Because if you have something in a box, kids want to see what's inside!

I'll hold Mr. Potato Head and  I'd say, “Oh, no, what's happened? Mr. Potato Head is missing his parts. What are we going to do?” I put it down. 

My student would empty the box, which my students really enjoy too! So everything has been dumped out the box and we take a few minutes to look at all the pieces because investigating all the pieces that we're going to use for Mr. Potato Head is also really fun. I’ll say: “let's see what was in my basket. We have blue shoes. We have a mouth. We have a hat. We have a nose. We have ears. We have eyes. We have arms and hands, and just for fun, we have got some glasses too.” Now, just with this array, I'm going to show you multiple things that you can teach. You could work on following directions, which would be a receptive skill. So I could say, find the blue shoes. So my student would scan for the blue shoes. Next I would say put the blue shoes on. So here my student is using receptive skills, listening skills, following instructions to complete the task. Boom, you've got it right there. There's one learning skill down! Next, I could say, “Show me something that you smell with. Now what do you smell with? Smell with your nose.” So then that would be part of a function feature in class, because a function of your nose is to smell. So that's another skill that you could work on with Mr. Potato Head. 

You can also work on discrimination. “Find something that's black. Well, the hats black. Now put the hat on Mr. Potato Head.” So can you guess the other skill that I just targeted? You probably got it right. It's prepositions. So put the hat on top of Mr. Potato Head. “Now find something that you listen with. The ears.” So you put the ears on. 

During this time, the child is probably sitting and waiting for the next instruction. Now, if you remember, waiting is another social skill so without the child even realizing, they are working on this social skill all embedded in this one activity. “Oh, it's Miss Jen's turn. It's my turn. I choose the mouse.” So right there, you're working on turn taking and just the fact that the child and I are sitting together in the same space and engaging with the same toy we are working on sharing. 

“Now let's see what's left. What's this? Oh, that's right, It's arms.” So the child's working on expressive language skills, labeling items on Mr. Potato Head. “Here's his other arm. And last but not least, find something that you see with. They're the eyes.” So that's the skill that we covered earlier. That was a function, find something that you see with. 

Now, of course, when you delve into some of those upper level skills like function, feature, class, you would target those skills for children that are ready to engage in those skills. If this is an early learner and you're just at the beginning stages of teaching, sharing and social skills and things like that, then I would probably stick to the more simpler skills such as waiting, turn taking, receptive learning skills, listening to instructions. Only after the child acquired more of those basic skills would I then delve into upper level. I just wanted to show you examples of the huge array of skills that you could target with Mr. Potato Head. 

Another thing that I wanted to touch on is eye contact and joint attention. Two really important foundational social skills that are typically taught during the early stages of social skills acquisition. How do we teach eye contact? And also what is eye contact? Eye contact is basically when two people engage in looking at each other's eyes at the same time. Now, this is a really tricky balancing act because if you have too much eye contact, it might make people feel uncomfortable. Too little eye contact, and it might look like you're uninterested. So how do we teach eye contact? First, it's really important to get to the child's level, or even slightly under them. This is because it might be really strenuous if the child has to look up at you, and it just makes it much easier if you're at their level or just below. I would also orient the item that they want close to your eye. Now, if they don't look right at your eye, that's okay. We really need to celebrate every small success, even if they just orient to this area, that's worth celebrating. Of course, over time, we would shape up and refine the behavior with the hopes that we could get proper eye contact, but we are shaping up and celebrating each small success. For eye contact, we put it close to the eye, they orient to this area and we give them the item. 

With joint attention, which is another really important social skill, that’s when two people engage in a shared moment together at the same time. How do we encourage this? Using Mr. Potato Head, I would place an item that I know the child really likes over to one side. I would use gestures, maybe a pointing finger and my eye gaze with the hopes that this would prompt the child to look and engage at the item with me at the same time. Again, if they don't do it right away, that's okay. We're going to shape up, reinforce and encourage all attempts. That's just the tip of the iceberg with Mr. Potato Head. There are so many more opportunities in this one toy. In my short piece above, we covered receptive language, expressive language, prepositions, sharing, turn taking, and so much more. And this is why Mr. Potato Head is one of my favorites!

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