Home School Hour - Fungus

Our November Home School Hour covered one of my favorite subjects... 

Fungus!

I took an Intro to Mycology class in college that I found surprisingly fascinating, and I've had a special interest in fungus ever since. It's pretty cool stuff!

 We started out with a very basic question- What is a mushroom?

We worked our way through the first few answers (plant, vegetable, etc.) Then we learned about the separate Kingdom for Fungi, and the fact that it ISN'T a plant after all!

I gave them a trick question... Are mushrooms and toadstools the same thing? We did a class vote (raise your hand if you think they are... raise your hand if you think they aren't) and discovered that everyone was right. ¹

We talked about the purpose of fungus as an important decomposer, and about how we wouldn't like it very much if all the leaves and dead bugs continued to pile up for thousands of years until we were all buried in it. Then we talked about uses.

This is my favorite part about fungus. We talked about what people can do with fungus. We talked about eating mushrooms, making medicine, and all the many cool things we get from mycology. At Ecovative Design you can purchase samples of MycoFoam and MycoBoard. We discussed the ability to grow 'Styrofoam'  in whatever shape you need for packing, and how strong plywood is when it's actually grown together instead of glued. We discussed Muskin, and Quorn, and Mycoprotein. We all decided it's pretty cool that fungus can be used for so many different things.

We learned a little bit about mushroom history, and about Fairy Rings. Waaaaay back in the old days, people suspected that mushrooms were magical because they sprouted up quickly over night, and formed in circular shapes (so logically, it had to be a result of the fairies). What the people back then didn't realize was that the mushrooms are only the fruiting body of a fungus, so a ring of mushrooms is connected. Like how an apple grows as the end of different branches on a tree, mushrooms grow at the end of different mycelial 'roots.' Plus, the mushrooms that grew so quickly were already fully formed under ground. They absorb water and spring up over night (which happens a lot faster than the growth of most plants).

We illustrated this point with grow capsules. We got magic grow capsules. It was a pretty good deal online with 72 capsules for about $9. We mixed ours together in a jar, so each kid got a mystery capsule and a bowl of warm water to watch how this works. As the outer shell dissolves, the spongy animal bursts through, fully formed, and filled with water. It's a pretty good comparison to a mushroom growing out of its cup.
(We also had a pretty good photo to show the different stages of mushroom emergence)

We went over the basic growth cycle of a mushroom to understand more about how this works (and we got to learn some cool vocab like 'mycelium' and 'germination'. 

Our vocabulary lesson continued with the main parts of a mushroom. We used a few goofy hand motions to help us remember these... wiggling our fingers for the mycelium, clapping our hands together for the cup, holding up one finger for the stipe, wrapping our finger and thumb around that finger for the ring, hands on top of our head for the pileus, down our necks for the gills, and tapping the tops of our heads for the UVR. It's definitely silly (especially for the older kids), but it can really help with memorization.

For our snack, we had these Shiitake Chips.

They tasted a little bit like Funyuns, and were adorable, tiny, crunchy little mushrooms. The kids also got to sample Mushroom Jerky. Now, I didn't care much for this one (the aftertaste stayed with me even through dinner that evening), but it was a different way to eat mushrooms, and the kids that liked it really liked it. They kept asking for second helpings of it... thirds... and if they could take some home (I eagerly obliged...  I certainly wasn't going to take it home). It has roughly the same texture as beef jerky, and a very strong, woodsy flavor. We also had bananas for the less adventurous eaters, and talked about the impact of fungus on banana plants (why doesn't banana candy taste like bananas?)²

Our final activity for our fungal fun day was mushroom stamping. We didn't have enough time to make Spore Prints, so we opted for a different way to study mushrooms on paper.

Each kid got a few fresh mushrooms (just a grocery store white variety... most of our local fruits are out of season). They were instructed to cut the mushroom in half, and then stamp it into and ink pad and on a piece of paper. We were able to identify different parts of the mushroom on paper (marks of the gills and ring, the stipe, the pileus... etc.) and we were able to locate some open spaces in the mushroom where water was absorbed and held.

We cut the mushrooms at different spots for different angles (gill prints were harder to get, but they looked pretty cool). 

I was pretty excited about this Home School Hour. The program ran very smoothly, and I think the kids had fun. Hopefully they learned something too!

1. They technically are the same, but most people use 'toadstool' to refer to a poisonous fruit, and 'mushroom' to refer to an edible one.
2. The Gros Michel banana used to be the major import fruit, before 1965 when the Panama Disease (a fungal disease) wiped out most of its commercial plants. We now use a different species of banana. Candy isn't necessarily based on the Gros Michel, but it does taste more similar.