This work aimed at creating an educational project with elementary school students from the São Miguel community in Esperança county, state of Paraiba, Brazil. We encouraged the children to think about the importance of soil in their life, and also tried to use a pedologic terminology adapted to the students' everyday language. The applied methodology followed Paulo Freire's approach, which extrapolates the school context from the classroom and tries to reach out for as many people in the community as possible. Thus, information was collected on the families income, housing type, number of brothers and sisters, main occupation of the family head, etc. A minimum vocabulary, with words and expressions that synthesize São Miguel's overall knowledge, was extracted from this initial survey. Results reflect the hard life and a repressive education when it comes to children's rebelliousness. Pedagogic elements present in the minimum vocabulary suggest that pedologic knowledge could be popularized in elementary schools. The minimum vocabulary promoted a better communication between educators and students during classes. It also favored the construction of concepts for the most representative soils types - Entisols and Ultisols. The construction of soil monoliths represented an important part of the expository and dialogue classes, arousing the interest of children for the soil and environment subjects.
pedology; language; soil taxonomy
