Good Morning!
Mushroom Hunting is one of the Specialties of the Refugees

...hehehe
My record is 27.. but I am not even the highest!

I think Maura has 35+ (wish I could get the post back...)
So... Mushroom Hunting is a valuable tool for getting through rough spots. There are two ways to get boo-koo shrooms.
When you see the mushroom pop up: If your close to the center, bang a couple times on the drum. This will get the kiddies running toward you. PAUSE the game by hitting the space bar on your keyboard. The mushroom will still have a limited life span on pause but you have much more time to work... Using the smallest kids first (the preteens take up more space)start dropping the kids on the mushroom. You have a wider circle that you think to do this. Watch the detail line each time you drop... it should say "Collecting mushrooms" (something like that). When your little guys are no longer getting that detail, you are done - no more time/space. But try one more right on top -- sometimes you just dropped the last one too far out of the circle and missed... When you know that you got all you can... unpause and watch them all march to the bin with their very own shroom! Each shroom gets equal points - IF its the red one... (or what ever color you have changed the special mushroom to hahah or shape for that matter here!) you get 45 food units per! That adds up fast!
Now the second way to go a'huntin is to stake out the mushrooms. This really is Maura's trick... Bang on your drum to get all the kids at school then PAUSE your game. While paused, put all the adults in the flower garden (or somewhere out of the way). Mushrooms still pop up while the game is paused!

hahahahaha You scan around looking for them to pop up. When you see one, all your kids are ready ... plop them on the fungi and unpause. Everyone runs to the bin... once everyone has dumped their shroom, bang the drum again to get hem back to the school, pause and move your adults out of the way again and scan for another one.
NOTES: Don't ever bang on the drum while the kids have mushrooms in their hands! They will drop them in the dirt!And watch out for the non-running kids... they will lag behind the rest...
The Golden Child can be used to collect mushrooms... (even tho at that time, its just for the points, not the food value... but we tried to get a 1 rating on our mushroom count in the stats list...)
IF the mushrooms pop up over by the lily, the kids will most likely run into that big root and bump into each other-spinning like a dervish top. You will lose 1/2 the booty, but it's still good for a laugh!
Hope this was helpful!