I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities.

Mini Mushroom Grow Kit

Growing Mushrooms clearly takes a bit more than a single Saturday, but it is a great science activity with the kiddos. We grew a back to the roots Mushroom mini grow kit. That can be started in just a few minutes. The initial setup involves opening the box, cutting the bag, and soaking it in water. All the while discussing mushrooms, it was super easy to start.

Then it is fun to watch as it grows from tiny baby mushrooms to something we can eat in just 2 weeks. We grow tons of stuff with the kids, with a summer outdoor garden and our basement hydroponic garden (which I will cover in a future post).

If you have any questions about it, this is a pretty good youtube video that includes setup and a timelapse of the mushrooms growing.

Our kids love eating and cooking mushrooms, so it seemed like it would be fun to grow some so they could see the process and eat their bounty.

The mushrooms start coming up fast, and I think Theo pulled his first one off the box and popped it in his mount by day 6 after starting the kit.

From reading a bit about these kits, we should be able to grow two or three crops of mushrooms. We just started the second batch yesterday.

Our kids enjoyed sauteing them in butter, the first batch we harvested a bit too late, and they were a bit dry and cooked up chewy. We will see how we do with the next batch.

Full Mushroom Kit photo gallery