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Garden Toolkit and curriculum provided by Back to the Roots® . Visit backtotheroots.com/curriculum to download all unit materials and view source listings.

Back to the Roots is on a mission to Undo Food™ and reconnect kids to where food comes from. We’re

bringing this mission into your classroom with the Garden Toolkit—including the Mushroom Farm, Water

Garden, and Garden-in-a-Can—designed to inspire you to take a closer look at how food grows.

Unit 1 is based on the Mushroom Farm that you will use to grow organic oyster mushrooms over the course

of 10 days! By the end of this unit, you will be able to answer the questions below and be well on your way

to becoming a mycologist (someone who studies mushrooms and other members of the Kingdom Fungi).

Unit 1: Mushroom Farm

OVERVIEW

Chapter 1: What are mushrooms?

Introduction to the tree of life, how fungi

and other organisms are classiﬁed, and the

important resources that mushrooms and

people need to live!

Chapter 2: What do they do?

Exploration of the circle of life and how

mushrooms break down trees and plant

material to make nutrients and minerals.

Chapter 3: How do they grow?

A closer look at the anatomy and life cycle of

the oyster mushroom and the diﬀerences

between your Mushroom Farm and mush-

rooms growing in nature.

Thinking Cap

When you see the brain

icon put on your thinking

cap and write down your

answers to our challenge

questions!

WORD BANK

Keep an eye out for vocabulary words in

blue throughout each chapter, and visit

the Mushroom Glossary at the end to ﬁnd

each deﬁnition.

mycologist

tree of life

organisms

species

mushrooms

hyphae

mycelium

nucleus

decompose

resources

ecosystem

enzymes

soil food web

substrate

gills

basidia

ACTIVITIES

Mushroom Farm Growth Log

Thinking Cap: Unit Review

Back to the Roots Garden Toolkit

Summary of content (12 pages)

PAGE 1
Back to the Roots Garden Toolkit Unit 1: Mushroom Farm OVERVIEW Back to the Roots is on a mission to Undo Food™ and reconnect kids to where food comes from. We’re bringing this mission into your classroom with the Garden Toolkit—including the Mushroom Farm, Water Garden, and Garden-in-a-Can—designed to inspire you to take a closer look at how food grows.
PAGE 2
S Chapter 1: What are mushrooms? Tree of Life Basidiomycota Animals ARCHAEA BACTERIA tree of life (or technically–the phylogenetic tree of life ) represents The EUCARYOTA Slime molds Fungi Ascomycota Glomeromycota Zygomycota Chytridiomycota Plants how life has evolved on planet Earth! Some brilliant scientists not too long ago decided they needed a way to talk about the living things they saw. They set out to organize and classify life as we know it using a science called (or ).
PAGE 3
Chapter 1: What are mushrooms? Mushrooms are more like animals than plants, even though they might not look like it. When we look at what they need, it becomes a little more clear.
PAGE 4
Chapter 2: What do mushrooms do? ecosystem An is an ecological system, or all the living things in an area interacting with one another and the resources available there. Every living thing, or , has a special role to play as they interact with the same (the things that aren’t alive like nutrients, minerals, air, water, and sunlight). Everything feeds something else, and eventually everything dies.
PAGE 5
Chapter 3: How do mushrooms grow? Mushrooms are mysterious creatures and it can be tricky to see how they grow, mostly because they spend the majority of their life below ground as a network of hyphae (see Chapter 2 if you need a refresher). To really understand what’s happening as mushrooms grow, we need to take a closer look. Read each step of the growth cycle below while looking at the diagram on Page 7.
PAGE 6
Chapter 3: How do mushrooms grow? Understanding Mushroom Growth cont’d. 6 In nature this happens under the soil where the mycelium searches for woody food to eat. In your classroom Mushroom Farm the same thing is happening, but we went ahead and gave the mycelium all the food it needs in a , or growing substance. The bag inside your Mushroom Farm includes woodchips, sawdust, and wheat bran for your mycelium to eat.
PAGE 7
Chapter 3: How do mushrooms grow? Label each step in the diagram below with the numbers from “Understanding Mushroom Growth” on Page 5-6.
PAGE 8
Vocabulary Basidium (ba·sid·i·um) Spore Cannons! Microscopic structures on the gills of the mushroom which form spores and shoot them out like cannons! Decompose Eukaryota (de·com·pose) To break down or decay over time. (eu·kary·ot·a) Domain of living things with multiple cells and a nucleus. Includes Kingdom Plantae, Animalia, and Fungi. Ecosystem (eco·sys·tem ) An ecological system of all living things interacting with one another and the resources in a given area.
PAGE 9
Vocabulary Organism Phylogenetic Tree of Life (or·gan·ism) Any living thing. (phy·lo·ge·net·ic) A visual represenation of the evolution of life on Earch showing relationships between species. Pinning Resources (pin·ning) The early stage of mushroom growth when the mushroom caps begin to appear. light. (re·source) The non-living parts of an environment like nutrients, minerals, air, water, and sun- Soil Food Web Species An ecosystem living below the soil.
PAGE 10
Mushroom Daily Growth Log Use this growth log to carefully observe your Mushroom Farm over the next 10 days, and draw what you see below (feel free to use a separate piece of paper if you want to make your drawings bigger!).
PAGE 11
Thinking Cap: Garden Toolkit Unit 1 Review Now that you’ve completed Unit 1: Mushroom Farm of the Garden Toolkit, fill out the answers to the questions we set out to learn. Chapter 1: What are mushrooms? Chapter 2: What do mushrooms do? Chapter 3: How do mushrooms grow? Congratulations! You’re officially a mycologist! Garden Toolkit and curriculum provided by Back to the Roots® . Visit backtotheroots.com/curriculum to download all unit materials and view source listings.
PAGE 12
Teacher Resources GROWING YOUR MUSHROOM FARM Step 1: Open the package and cut a cross in the plastic bag • • • • Students should open the kit, remove the sprayer and cut open the packaging. Have them scratch up the white block as indicated on the package, and remove a small bit of the substrate* and put it on a plate. Place removed substrate on a white plate (best to use microscope if possible). Pass the plate around.