By the time we got to day 15 of our camping theme, we had covered quite a bit: everything “At the Campsite” and “In the Night”. Week three was all about things “On the Trail”, including mushrooms.
Mushrooms are interesting. The ones in the Daily Topic are different than any we’ve seen around here. I always talk to my kids and tell them we should never eat anything if we don’t know what it is or if it’s safe. So we decided we better not eat this kind of mushrooms if we were camping and found them growing in the woods.
Mushroom Make & Play
I am always impressed with the simplicity of materials that Mother Goose Time includes and the creative ways they can be used. Our mushroom project was made with souffle cups and a cardboard tube. So simple!
Each Make & Play comes with ideas for playing with the craft.
First we painted the mushroom tops. Sometimes we use acrylic paints, like we did on the mushrooms. The color is vibrant. (My kids should be wearing paint shirts but sometimes we risk it!)
After the tops were dry, I used hot glue to securely glue them to the top of the tube.
After adding the white dots and painting the stems (if desired), we put them in our fairy garden. So cute!
We can’t leave them there or they will get ruined in the rain of course, but they were cute there for a while.
I’m saving the mushrooms for the garden party we are having. We will each find a spot to put our mushrooms on display for parents to find.
So whimsical and fun!
We never seen mushrooms like these in our area but they are interesting.
Finding Mushrooms
We did find some different varieties in our yard! This is a “stinkhorn” mushroom. We had 5 of them growing near the house.
I’ve never seen one before and was intrigued by the color. I looked it up online and figured out that this type of mushroom is being spread through commercial mulch. And they are growing in the mulch along the house. They were kind of stinky too!
I’m not sure what kind of mushrooms these are but they are the more common ones we see in our yard. Great discoveries for my kids!
Mushroom Patterns
How fun are these mushroom pattern cards? Sometimes the younger ones start out matching the pictures to the pattern card but that’s okay, it’s a good thing!
The pattern cards could also be used as a memory/matching game.
Pointing out the colors and saying the pattern out loud helps the child understand what we attempting to do. “Yellow, blue, blue… what comes next?”
More camping fun, like mosquitoes…. coming up!