Living Root Garden School • Soil & the Underground • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the log that turned to soil — a dead tree is disappearing, bite by bite. Who is eating it?
The cleanup crew has three teams. Team Shredder: worms, pillbugs, and millipedes — animals that eat dead stuff are called detritivores, which literally means dead-stuff-eaters. They chomp dead stuff into bite-sized pieces you can actually see.
Team Fungi: a fungus is mostly a hidden network of super-thin threads called hyphae spreading through dead wood. The mushroom you see is just the fruit. Hyphae release enzymes — chemical scissors that chop tough stuff like lignin, the stuff that makes trees stiff, into small snackable pieces.
Team Bacteria: single-celled microbes so tiny you would need a microscope to see them, and a single teaspoon of healthy soil holds more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. They finish the job and hand the nutrients back to the soil in forms plant roots can absorb.
Here is how one fallen leaf gets recycled: a millipede shreds it, fungi soften the pieces, bacteria dissolve what is left, the nutrients slide back into the soil, and a plant drinks them up to grow a brand-new leaf. And never eat a wild mushroom unless a true expert says it is safe — many tasty-looking ones have evil twins that look almost identical.
Ask: What will change most on your log in two weeks — its color, its softness, or the creatures living on it? Write your guess before your first visit.
Try: Adopt a rotting log and visit it three times over two weeks, logging what changes each time — color, softness, cracks, and who has moved in. Put everything back the way you found it.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Compare decay rates: put two different materials — a leaf and a twig, or a scrap of paper and a scrap of cardboard — in the same spot on the same schedule. Which breaks down faster, and why?
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what changed, what you found living there — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “My log changed ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw your log as it looked on visit one and as it looked on visit three — what changed?
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Show someone your two log drawings and tell them what would happen if nothing ever rotted — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can trace a dead leaf back into a living plant.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Log-visit notes
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can trace a dead leaf back into a living plant.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.