Exploding Potatoes! is a series of educational resources exploring the links between literacy and music.
We have spent eighteen months developing and perfecting the first series of this resource which we think will bring success and enjoyment to all.

It all began a few years ago when my ten year old son Leo asked me to spell the word ‘necessary’. I picked up my guitar and sang to a boogie-woogie pattern:

‘It’s n-e-c-e-s-s-a-r-y to have your breakfast on time’

He laughed, immediately imitated the song and spelt the word correctly. For me, as for Leo, a light bulb had been switched on!

I started to investigate all of the high frequency words that primary children have to learn. The result was ‘Exploding Potatoes!’

At Leo’s school (Holmfirth Infant and Junior School) I discovered that phonics could also be introduced through music. For example in The Paper Boat song we discover different examples of the phonic ‘oa’ sound such as boat, blow, goes, float. The different spellings of a phonic sound are called graphemes. Following the performance of this song the children listed almost 30 words with a similar phonic sound such as snow, flow, goat etc.
The song was an integral part of the phonic lesson and certainly motivated the pupils to listen more intently and learn in a new and exciting way.

“After using this resource over a period of time we observed an improvement in the spelling ages for this class.”

Read more about this in the About Us section…