wall painting

Hi All!
    Today I was given the task of painting our portion of the school wall.  Each class has a section to paint and they are supposed to put their handprints on the wall.  I had painted the base color on Wednesday and felt confident in my strategy to paint today.   The paint was on plates, the kids were to dip their hand and then go directly to the outdoor sink down the hall to wash their hand.   I was taking 5 kids at a time.

     The first kid takes her hand, covered in paint, and smears it across the wall, dripping everywhere.  I took the opportunity to remind the kids to keep their hands very still.  The second student had too much paint on her hands and it started to drip off her hand print.  At this point I had the students blot their hand on a paper towel to remove excess paint.  Another teacher in the building suggested propping open the bathroom door so the kids could go directly in to wash their hands.  He reminded the students not to touch the soap dispensers with their painted hands.

     Upon completing the last of the 5 hand prints, which turned out pretty well!, I went into the bathroom where I saw paint EVERYWHERE!  At this point, I walked back to the classroom and continued the cycle with fewer kids this time and I walked with them to the sink in the hall after they had all done their hand prints.  Again, paint was everywhere, but in a much smaller degree with my supervision.

     My final group of 3 for the day had perfect hand prints.  However, when I told them to wait while I gathered the supplies we had used and turned my back from them, they were gone!  They had returned to the classroom bathroom, paint and all!

      I feel like today was one of those learning experiences where I couldn't have known until I did it.  Luckily I had a good 10 minutes to reflect as I cleaned the 4 sinks my students had used!

Julie