Mushrooms: science and safety

This lesson plan provides fun activities designed to inspire children, aged 7-11, focusing on the science and safety elements around mushrooms. It alerts them to the dangers of picking wild mushrooms and encourages kids to expand their vocabulary and understand the life cycle of mushrooms. It relates to the curriculum in your country by meeting certain learning outcomes. Downloadable materials to support the lesson plan include a diagram of a mushroom, a poster on the life cycle of a mushroom, a cut-out sequence of a life cycle and a mushroom key words document.

Activities
Here is a set of activities provided as an introduction to learning about mushrooms. They are intended to inspire the children to want to learn more about how mushrooms get from farm to fork.

The activities can be done independently of each other and are intended as a selection from which you may choose the most appropriate/interesting for your setting.

Safety first
One really important fact for children to learn is that, although many mushrooms are delicious to eat, a few wild ones are extremely poisonous and may make people very ill, or even kill them. Set the scene by telling the children that some mushrooms have been discovered in the local woods, but people have been picking them to eat and then becoming ill. Ask them either to design a poster to go up in the neighbourhood, or to put together a leaflet to be distributed locally, which warns people about the dangers of picking and eating wild fungi. The leaflet/poster needs to remind people that the only safe way of getting mushrooms is to get them from a supermarket or shop. The message has to be very clear and simple: DON’T TOUCH WILD FUNGI. This could be done with different media, such as paint, charcoal and crayon, or produced on a computer.

Learning words
There are lots of special words associated with mushrooms. A list of some of these words, together with the definitions, is shown here. Put the children into groups, and have a copy of the list for each group. The list should be cut up, with the definitions in one pile and the words in another for each group. See which group is the first to match up the words correctly with their definitions.

Fungi  - One of the groups that living things are organised into, neither plant nor animal

Spores - Microscopic seeds that spray out to form new fungi

Hyphae (hi-fee) - Threads that form the body of a fungus

Mycelium (my-sée-lee-um) - Body of the fungus

Gills - Underside of the mushroom cap, where the spores are released

Composting - Breaking down of organic material into simple molecules, to be easily absorbed

Mycophagist - Someone who collects and eats mushrooms

Life cycles
The life cycle of the mushroom is quite straightforward. Copy the following statements, one for each child, without the numbers. Cut them up and mix them up so they are in a different order. The children are to try to put them in the correct order.

1. The reproductive part of the mushroom releases spores into the air.

2. The spores that land in their ideal environment (this could be soil, dung or plant litter) begin to produce the mycelium under the ground.

3. The growth of the mycelium at the surface of the soil produces a young, very small mushroom covered by a structure called the universal veil.

4. The mushroom breaks through this veil and grows taller and wider.

5. The adult mushroom produces spores and the cycle starts again.

Ask the children to draw diagrams to show what is happening at each stage.

Download supporting materials for this science-focused mushroom lesson plan

Supporting downloadable materials are:

• a diagram of a mushroom
  
  
• an A3 poster on the life cycle of a mushroom
  
  
• a cut-out sequence of the life cycle of a mushroom
  
  
• a mushroom key words document