She had initially been reluctant to use the tried-and-true turkey-made-from-paint-on-a-child’s-hand project but finally decided it would be a good introduction. Once the children got their hands in the paint, though, the chaos she’d feared surfaced and quickly took over. They dutifully pressed their hands to the paper. There was giggling and bumping as everyone moved along the table to press their hands into a different color set out in pans on a work table. They pressed their hands into the paper again, but the third pass was too much of a temptation. In their little minds the obvious next step was touching one another. Before Bobbie could react, children were sporting orange noses, yellow foreheads, multicolored blotches on their T-shirts and dresses. The classroom aide had outfitted the students with aprons, but still, paint was everywhere. The aide, a wonderful volunteer in her midthirties named Fernanda, laughed and patted Bobbie’s shoulder when she saw her distress.
