Wild Foods of the Pacific Northwest | 8-Week Science Unit

For the kid who stops to look at every mushroom.

Follow that curiosity into the science of plants and fungi. Wild Foods of the Pacific Northwest is an eight-week homeschool unit with 16 guided sessions, built around grade 3 science. Your child will grow beans, make a spore print, compare plant parts and lookalikes, graph real observations and build a field guide they can explain in their own words.

WHAT YOU RECEIVE

• The Guide: 113 pages of session plans, tray lists, reading references, questions, answers and science connections.

• The Field Journal: 55 PDF pages, including 53 numbered journal pages for drawings, measurements, graphs and five field guide entries.

• Wild Food Cards: all 31 cards on eight printable sheets.

• A quick home-printing guide.

HOW IT WORKS

Plan for two sessions a week on days that are not back to back. Each follows a familiar rhythm: a short lesson, a reading while your child draws, then something to do with what they have noticed. The Guide includes the care and checkpoints for the beans and mushroom kit.

BEFORE YOU BUY

This is a digital download. No physical books, kit or supplies are shipped. You will need two companion books separately: Fungarium by Ester Gaya, illustrated by Katie Scott (ISBN 9781536217094), and A Kid's Guide to Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Philippa Joly (ISBN 9781990776212). You will also need an oyster mushroom grow kit, bean-growing supplies, common groceries and basic art and household materials. The full list is on Guide pages 6 and 7.

The plants, weather examples and cultural context are specific to the Pacific Northwest. Families elsewhere can do the indoor activities and compare their own habitats, with the understanding that local plants and seasons differ.

This is a science and observation unit. Children do not pick, dig or taste wild plants or mushrooms. Food activities use identified groceries or a cultivated grow kit with adult supervision.

PRINTING

US Letter, at 100% or Actual size. Print the Guide and Field Journal double-sided, flipping on the long edge. Keep the journal's blank inside cover so facing pages line up. Print cards single-sided on cardstock. You can keep the Guide on a screen to save paper and ink.

One household license. Print a journal for each learner in your household and share one Guide and card set.

Questions? Email hana@madedeliberate.com.