Lesson # 198; Mushrooms (Handbook of Nature Study)

“...this is exactly what a child should be doing for the first few years.

He should be getting familiar with the real things in his own environment.

Some day he will read about things he can’t see; how will he conceive of them without the knowledge of common objects in his experience to relate them to?

Some day he will reflect contemplate, reason.

What will he have to think about without a file of knowledge collected and stored in his memory?”

Charlotte Mason, volume 1 page 66

Look what we found! These are some of the largest mushrooms I have ever seen.  Mushrooms seed themselves with spores that drop from their gills in beautiful patterns. so we brought one in to make a print of these patterns.  We carefully placed the mushroom, gill side down, on a piece of construction paper. We chose black paper since the shade of the gills was white. If the gills had been black, we would have chosen a light shade of paper to contrast best. We left the mushroom undisturbed for about 24 hours, and look at this beautiful pattern! We sprayed the print with hair spray to keep it from smudging.

"Although mushrooms are not really plants, they are often discussed with the nonvascular plants because scientists used to think that they were nonvascular plants. Scientists now classify them as a fungus, a special kind of living thing that is a decomposer."

"The ideal method would be to study the mushrooms in the field and forest, making an excursion for the purpose of collecting as many species as possible."

"Since mushrooms are especially good subjects for watercolor and pencil studies, it would add much interest if each pupil or the school as a whole, should make a portfolio of sketches of all the species found." Handbook of Nature Study, age 717



"Mushrooms are the fruiting organs of the fungi which grown in the form of threads, spreading in every direction through the food material. The dust which falls from the ripe mushrooms is made up of spores, which are not true seeds, but which will start a new growth of the fungus." -Handbook of Nature Study, page 717

Once they began to notice mushrooms,
they found them everywhere!



Something had cut this one off and turned it over, exposing the gills.

"(There is) no wonder that many superstitions cluster about toadstools. In times of old, not only was it believed that toads sat on them, but that fairies danced upon them and used them for umbrellas......But science, in these days, brings revelations concerning these mysterious plants which are far more wonderful than the web which superstition wove about them in days of yore."-Handbook of Nature Study, page 714

It may be hard to tell from this picture but a mushroom "fairy ring" surrounds our van.

You can see part of the ring in the foreground and, if you look closely, you can see a couple more at the back.

The rest are beyond the picture on the right.

We just couldn't get the whole ring in the picture.

It was that large!

 To further our study, we found this unusual and very informative book called Katya's Book of Mushrooms by Katya Arnold and Sam Swope. It's lovely, accurate illustrations show the differences between poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms. Not that I would pick and eat mushrooms from the forest, but it was interesting to see.

 It shows a type of mushroom called a bolete.

 The illustrations are realistically accurate but often have a fairy tale quality about them.

 We loved the illustration showing the parts of a mushroom, showing that the Mycelium, or the largest part of the mushroom is underground, which explains the fairy rings.

I highly recommend this book for studying mushrooms with children.