The kids and I have been taking advantage of the warmer spring days by incorporating a Nature Study into our school schedule. We go for walks around the neighborhood or in the backyard. We listen for nature sounds, find interesting insects, and touch things to record textures and descriptions. We draw pictures of our favorite finds and jot down notes about unusual or unknown objects for further research.
The study has been a lot of fun and something we all look forward to. But there was one reoccurring problem. Sweetgum balls. Normally, the only problem with round, spiky sweetgum balls is that they fall all over our yard, which then becomes something of a mini-mine field. They are too small to be mulched up in the lawn mower, but big enough to cause intense pain when stepped on by bare feet!
This year though, as we scoured the yard for our study, I kept hearing the same thing, “Look at all the sweet gumballs!”, “Ouch! I stepped on a sweet gumball!!!”, or “Mom? Can we use sweet gumballs for our report?”
And each time I would repeat these words, “It’s not SWEET gumballs. It’s sweetgum balls.”
So I took the lesson a step further and drew the picture above on the dry erase board in the school room. I thought a visual might help. “See the tree? It’s a sweetgum tree. Sweetgum balls fall from the sweetgum tree. See the smiling child? The child has a gumball. Yum! Those are sweet! Sweet describes the gumball candy. Over here, sweetgum is describing the type of ball or seed. Understand?”
(crickets chirping)
After several attempts, I gave up. We went to look for the crickets.
