Mushroom experiment an at home lesson for parents who want to teach environmental science to children

This is a great experiment to explain the reproductive cycle of fungi.

Please only do this experiment on shop bought mushrooms as some mushrooms and toadstools are dangerous.

Please be careful if you have a respiratory condition since fungi spores can be problematic.

Step one: Take your mushroom and carefully snap off the stalk.

Step two: Either do this again with a second mushroom or cut the mushroom in half so you end up with two semi circles.

Step three: Put each mushroom, or mushroom half. on a different coloured sheet of paper (black and white are good), gill side down.

Step four: Leave in a dark cool cupboard overnight.

Step five: In the morning, you will see the gill pattern of dropped spores which you can secure in place with sticky tape.

In the traditional mushroom shape, the rounded top is called the cap.

Right under the cap are the gills, where the spores are held.

The spores travel on the wind to find a new home just like dandelion seeds.

Different species of mushroom have different coloured spores which is why we used different coloured paper- to make sure we could see them because they are so tiny.

The stalk holds the cap and gills above the surface of the soil.Under the soil are the mycelium.Most of the fungus is underground, this bit is called the mycelium. The mushroom is like the fruit of a tree. Mycelium can cover lots of space underground that we can’t see.

Toadstools sometimes have scales or warts on the top of the cap, and sometimes a ring, like a little skirt, somewhere on the stalk. Sometimes toadstools have pores, like a bath sponge, instead of gills. Why not have a go and drawing a labelled picture of a mushroom?

You can get creative with colours and make your very own fungi species.

Fungi are important in breaking down dead material like plants and animals.

They recycle the nutrients ready for something new to grow.

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