Hellobee

Mushrooms are amazing! Have you ever made mushroom prints with your children? It’s really easy and all you need is some paper, mushrooms, and a few bowls. The results look spectacular and it can be an easy or complex lesson, depending on the age of your children, on how mushrooms reproduce.

First we trimmed the stems off the mushrooms. My children were a little rough, so the results aren’t perfect, but we enjoyed the process as much as the results. Place the mushrooms with the gills facing down, towards the paper. Then cover the mushrooms with a bowl or container. We used the bottom part of our glasslock containers as we have so many of them. This creates a little humidity but also allows the spores to drop straight down from the gills onto the paper without disturbance.

As much as possible keep the mushrooms still; don’t move them or take a peek until 12 or so hours later. We got a little busy and left ours for around 24 hours. If you have toddlers you might want to put the mushrooms out of reach.

Then it’s time to take a look!!! Gently lift up the mushroom caps to reveal the print!

They are beautiful. Every mushroom will leave a different print. It would be fun to experiment with different types of mushrooms. We’ve used flat and portabello mushrooms.

The prints are made from the mushrooms spores dropping onto the paper. If you or your children blow on or touch the print, the spores will move and smudge. If you want to preserve the print you can spray it with a fixitive. You can put the spores under the microscope or simply explain to the child how mushrooms use spores not seeds to reproduce. If your children are old enough you could even watch a video about it! This was so easy and afforable, I hope you give it a try!!