Getting into the spirit

Mike Swanson

Few kindergartners could resist ticklishly giggling Monday as a

parent helper painted the bottoms of their feet brown for a

Thanksgiving art project.

Garrett Wolfe, 6, was the only student in Traci Jimenez’ Hope View

Elementary School class who remained relatively poker-faced through

the painting process.

After stepping their painted feet onto a sheet of paper, students’

brown footprints would serve as turkey heads and bodies, surrounded

by a collage of multi-colored tissue paper glued into feathered

patterns of the students’ choice.

After establishing a footprint, the children were supposed to put

their brown foot directly into a tub of water conveniently located

right next to them.

Taylor Gottschalk, however, didn’t spot it right away, and she

planted her 5-year-old right foot directly on the carpet, leaving a

faint record of herself in the classroom. After Susan Wolfe quickly

snatched Taylor’s foot and put it in the water, Taylor wanted out.

“It’s cold like mold,” Taylor yelled.

Taylor hung in there long enough to restore her foot to its

natural color, and returned to her desk to continue adding feathers

to her turkey, which had the fullest plumage of all the students’

birds.

“I want to have the most feathers,” Taylor said. “Feathers make it

more pretty.”

The student sitting across from her, 6-year-old Grant Lee, took an

entirely different approach, carefully placing one piece of tissue

paper at a time around his turkey’s border.

“I want to have enough space for my foot,” Grant said.

Five-year-old Jessenia Lottes was the last to put her footprint to

the paper, and didn’t have much space to deal with. Being the owner

of one of the smallest pairs of feet in the classroom, however, the

heavy-giggling Jessenia managed to squeeze her foot in. She took

exception, however, to the assertion that her feet were smaller than

most of her classmates.

“Hey,” Jessenia said. “They are not. They’re just normal feet.”

Jessenia’s greatest struggle came in getting her shoe back on,

which she tried to tie herself for a few minutes before giving in and

asking for help.

“Once I did it to Taylor’s shoe but it’s harder doing my own,”

Jessenia said.

After the students cleaned themselves up and put away their work,

they migrated next door to Renee Kornicks’ class, where they

rehearsed for a Tuesday Thanksgiving play that would display their

artwork.