Mushrooms are a common ingredient in our daily life. This scavenger of the natural world digests the dead leaves and returns the nourishment to the earth. "The fungus is the child of the forest." says the ancient Fu Zeng of Siberia
After a rain, There is a group of "elf" sprouts out of the grass. We found a small mushroom in the grass when we were walking. Our children are very excited about these little lives. So we started our journey to find more mushrooms in the kindergarten. Look! There is a tiny mushroom in the grass. We found mushrooms in the leaves, in the soil, in the grass.
The fungus grows on the earth and has a history of more than 400 million years. It grows under dark leaves, rotting trees, or soil. The types of fungi can be classified as saprophytic, parasitic, symbiotic and so on. Most of them are saprophytic edible, such as shiitake or oyster mushrooms. When it comes to mushrooms, we are not strangers. There are many kinds such as oyster mushroom, shiitake, pleurotus eryngii, enoki. But what is the growth environment of a mushroom? How to make a mushroom germinate?
With these questions, we took our children to learn about the growth process of mushrooms, so that the children could understand which of them were edible and which were poisonous. We also look up into books, search online for a more comprehensive understanding.
Practice is often the best teacher for children. So we’ve planted mushrooms in our classroom’s nature corner. The kids can get a better understanding of the growth process of mushroom in practice. The production began, and these mushrooms were given a few small bites, and then they were wrapped in a moist cotton. Now we need to wait and take good care of them.
The children loved the mushroom we grew and made a small hut for them. The children water the mushrooms every day and keep the cotton moist. We are recording the progress every day. We hope they can grow up quickly and have our own small mushrooms in our hands soon!
Children can not only learn about mushrooms, but experiencing the fun of planting and feeling the beauty of nature through these activities is wonderful (like finding mushrooms and exploring the mushroom growing in class and then keeping close watch over it in the nature corner.) There is an expansive lawn and lush trees to provide opportunities for children to appreciate nature. Children learn to treat natural things like trees, flowers and butterflies with respect.
