How do I get the children to pick mushrooms on their own.
My doesn't seem to do so.
any thoughts?

They can't pick them on their own. That is your job! So get busy!!

Kids can trip over mushrooms and not notice. Whenever you see a mushroom, start hunting for a kid, pick him/her up and drop him/her on the mushroom. Hopefully they'll make it all the way to the food bin with the mushroom intact. However, I've had instances where they get stuck on a tree root, building, or even the "wrong" side of the food bin itself and "poof", the mushroom is gone. It's REALLY nasty when they lose a red mushroom!!! When the game says that the children are "untrained" they mean it!

how do you get more than one child to pick mushrooms? I tried and lost a red one (mushroom, not child!), and there are no berries left! Bother! (or similar word...)

It depends on which kid you can snag first. Again, these kids will NOT pick mushrooms on their own--you have to physically pick them up and put them on each and every mushroom for them to pick it. And if you drop them too far away from the mushroom, they won't see it and won't pick it. Watch the message line and it will say the child sees a mushroom or some such thing--they'll only pick it after they "see" it.

You have to be fast in getting the mushrooms or they will disapear. If you have the school, use the drum on the right of the school building and all the kids will come running. Then just grap a kid and drop the kid on the mushroom. Also try putting everyone on your research to get tech points to "buy" level 2 in farming so they can plant crops.

Oh. I read a post from wanabeshores on 8/10 which said that if more than one child got to mushroom first, the food count would be higher. But, I couldn't get them to do that. I tried picking more than one up, and got the 'they are too young for that' message!
Anyway, I have fishing opened up now so I no linger care about the mushrooms. Tra la!

You got that because the game thought you were trying to mate them lol.

those red mushrooms are like 45 food points! are there any other differant color mushrooms?

brown is worth 8 I think