I wish I could be braver with mushrooms. I have it in my head that some are poisonous and I don't know which ones. So, to gather any, for any reason, makes me too nervous because what if the poison is on your fingers and you get it into your mouth? I don't have many irrational fears, but this is one of them. It makes me sad since I'd love to play with mushrooms.
We didn't actually touch any of the mushrooms, we use tongs, forceps and shovels to scoop and grab them. I also googled to see if any of the local growing mushrooms would have poisonous gases if heated and we were good to go. Thanks for sharing! G
That's one of the most fun things about learning at home -- the serendipitous directions in which learning travels.
10/11/11, 5:36 PM
We started out with Biology and talking about fungus and KM mentioned how many different types of mushrooms she has seen out in the yard lately. I had an idea - we should gather some samples and examine the differences. Then how would each react to heat - oh hey what a great excuse to start a fire in the pit.....
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Once we we had the fire going and mushrooms were "cooking" I suddenly remembered a post that I had stumbled upon last week at the hmmm...schooling mom's blog where they microwaved various types of soap...well I wondered what would happen if we put them over the fire....
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I was shocked at the various reactions melting points!
KM was inspired to carve some shapes out as she was prepping the samples.
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So from biology to mycology to scenting the neighborhood to soap sculpting.....where will the rest of our day take us?
3 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formI wish I could be braver with mushrooms. I have it in my head that some are poisonous and I don't know which ones. So, to gather any, for any reason, makes me too nervous because what if the poison is on your fingers and you get it into your mouth? I don't have many irrational fears, but this is one of them. It makes me sad since I'd love to play with mushrooms.
10/10/11, 9:52 PM
We didn't actually touch any of the mushrooms, we use tongs, forceps and shovels to scoop and grab them. I also googled to see if any of the local growing mushrooms would have poisonous gases if heated and we were good to go.
Thanks for sharing!
G
10/11/11, 9:07 AM
That's one of the most fun things about learning at home -- the serendipitous directions in which learning travels.
10/11/11, 5:36 PM