Before encountering mushrooms as part of our curriculum, they didn’t hold any particular meaning for our family. While we had enjoyed eating mushrooms, and generally delighting in their oddity, we had certainly never spent any focused time considering them. How funny it is now, that even the simple button mushroom could be seen as anything less than extraordinary.
It was towards the end of our school year that our schedule introduced us to these marvelous creations. To kick start our study we headed to our local grocer and returned triumphant with a variety tub of amusingly bulbous fungi. We spent a morning enjoying their shapes, textures and wonderfully delicate details. We observed, compared, broke apart and documented. Someone noticed how one specimen tore beautifully like mozzarella. Since nature study is a subject we prioritise with our co-op, we then spent a great morning with friends looking closely at the patterns that dropped spores make on paper (‘they look like galaxies!’), making sketches, and then washing our hands thoroughly.
It was in the midst of this term that our family took a long-awaited holiday in the Drakensburg. The delights of our previous mushroom studies could not compare with the treasure hunt that lay ahead of us. We found every shape, colour and size beyond imagination. Our eyes were eager to see what we may otherwise have glanced over (many mushrooms are of course designed not to draw attention to themselves). Prepared by our studies at home, finding these wonders deep in a forest felt like finding a friend in a foreign land.
Some time later we were walking through our local park when one of the children was drawn to a bright white something in the shade of a tree. A closer look revealed half a dozen totally different varieties of mushrooms. We searched, we compared, we delighted, we went home to wash our hands…
Six months on, my 3-year-old will still eagerly run in from our garden every time she discovers a lawn mushroom, fully sure that these simple treasures are worth sharing. And I heartily agree.
Mushroom spore mark prints are so beautiful. They were one of the highlights of our mushroom studies.