4Real Forums: Spore Prints

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Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science

Topic: Spore Prints

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Cay Gibson
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Joined: July 16 2005
Location: Louisiana
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Posted: June 21 2006 at 10:10pm \| IP Logged

Our spore prints didn't come out.

I'm totally bummed.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll get a whole new set of mushrooms on the lawn and I'll have a fresh brain to read through Dawn's blog and see what she did differently.

I really thought we'd get lucky the first go round. Beginner's luck, ya know.

I should have known better. Science experiments never work for me...even the simplest idea.

Thanks for the great link, Leonie. That I can do.

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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks

MichelleW
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Posted: June 22 2006 at 3:11am \| IP Logged

I am scared to try this. We have such a wide variety of mushrooms up here, but from what I understand, many of them are deadly. Aren't any of you worried about poisonous mushrooms? Am I just being paranoid?

Michelle

Dawn
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Joined: June 12 2005
Location: Massachusetts
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Posted: June 22 2006 at 4:32am \| IP Logged

Leonie wrote:

I found these activities for a fungi theme here...

Leonie this is a great site! Thanks for the tip.

Cay Gibson wrote:

Hopefully tomorrow we'll get a whole new set of mushrooms on the lawn and I'll have a fresh brain to read through Dawn's blog and see what she did differently.

Cay, you can't imagine how many tries it took us to get these few prints!! And these were all from *one* cap!

For us, the difference was finding mushrooms that had a true umbrella shaped cap. All the other kinds didn't come out - the spores just didn't "drop" the way these did, directly beneath the cap. I placed the cap on plain white copy paper and placed a small glass bowl over it and within an hour we had our first print! I just kept moving the cap around to make more.

For more instructions on spore prints (and where I got my inspiration!) check out Rebecca's post , Leonie's post, and Theresa's post.

I hope you get it to work, Cay! Let us know how it goes.

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Dawn, mum to 3 boys

By Sun and Candlelight
The Nature Corner

Cay Gibson
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Posted: June 22 2006 at 12:40pm \| IP Logged

MichelleW wrote:

Michelle,
Every good mother is paranoid.

You're in good company.

The key safety element here is to do the activity with your children.

I prefer to think of this activity as a good lesson in health and hygiene and safety. I cautioned the girls not to put their fingers near their mouth. We plucked the samples and placed them on a paper plate then went into the house and washed our hands.

I wouldn't send small children outside to do this on their own but, even when they're outside playing, we have the concern of them eating berries, petting a stray dog, and picking up stuff they shouldn't. So this really is a necessary lesson.

My youngest is 4 and she understood my caution. I'd probably allow a 3 yr old to do the activity too but any younger than that I'm afraid the hands-in-mouth is too common a temptation to avoid.

After putting the mushrooms on the paper, we washed our hands again. The children did check their samples during the day (only nothing happened

) and I just had to caution them to wash their hands each time...since I'm clueless about which (if any) are poisonious. I prefer to bend towards the side of caution anyway.

I don't want my dc to grow up with a fear of trying out new things so we venture out of our comfort zone.

Dawn,
Thanks for the info. We don't have any big, umbrella-style mushroom so our activity might have to wait awhile longer. We just had lots of little ones and fuzzy ones.

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Cay Gibson
"There are 49 states, then there is Louisiana." ~ Chef Emeril
wife to Mark '86
mom to 5
Cajun Cottage Under the Oaks

Dawn
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Joined: June 12 2005
Location: Massachusetts
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Posted: June 22 2006 at 3:29pm \| IP Logged

Cay Gibson wrote:

Dawn,
Thanks for the info. We don't have any big, umbrella-style mushroom so our activity might have to wait awhile longer. We just had lots of little ones and fuzzy ones.

Cay, ours were *tiny* - like the size of the tip of my thumb. I only had a few, and today they are gone. I think they sprout up with the rainy weather. Good luck!

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Dawn, mum to 3 boys

By Sun and Candlelight
The Nature Corner

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