For the classroom teacher, the potato can be an affordable "root of endless possibilities." Therefore, when helping students prepare for yearly participation in the Invent America program (an annual nationwide invention competition for K-12 students), the author leads her third-grade class through a “dry-run” of the inventing process using potatoes. Students model invention steps with diagrams, write a patent request, create imaginative marketing slogans, and discover the nature of science in the process.