“He had an acorn sack in his pocket.”

This one, surprisingly, did not come from a student, but actually another third grade teacher.

We recently took the third graders on a field trip to the Frisco Railroad Museum. On our way back to school, we stopped at Bacchus Park to let the kids eat lunch and play on the playground.

The playground was surrounded by a big soccer field that the kids were allowed to run around in and pick flowers.

One boy saw a group of girls picking flowers to make bouquets and decided he was going to pick up acorns. What he was going to do with the acorns is beyond me.

However, unlike the girls who left their bouquets at the park when we loaded the buses, he pocketed his acorns and took them on the bus. It wasn’t until we were pulling away from the park that we realized he had his pockets stuffed with the acorns.

We corrected this behavior and told him that that wasn’t a good choice and that he needed to put the acorns back outside. Since we were already on the road back to school, you would think he would then think, okay, I need to put them outside when we get off the bus.

No. He did not. As he was getting off the bus, we realized his pockets were no longer stuffed with the acorns.

He had taken the acorns out of his pockets and just set them on the floor of the bus. Acorns are round. Those things were all over the floor of the bus.

Naturally, this kid had to apologize to the bus driver and crawl under seats to pick up as many of the acorns as he could.

Common sense. It’s definitely a hard concept for 9-year-olds. That’s just how it is.