Sink Traffic

As an art teacher, I can safely tell you that the sink is always the hotbed of trouble in an art room.  Kids push and shove in line, they get paint on themselves and others, you have four kids all trying to wash at the sink at the same time which turns into splattering water all over the counter or paintbrush sword-fights.  If I had the time to wash everything myself I would - just to know it was done right and to ensure the lack of chaos.  However, this is the real world, and I have a limited amount of time in the day.  That means the kids have to be responsible for their own supplies.  That means taming the sink.  

This is how I handle the sink:

When students wait in line they must be on a set of footprints.  Those are just construction paper prints that I cut out and taped down using (a lot) of clear packing tape. Each footprint set touches the top edge of a floor tile.  Which means there is automatically the same amount of space in-between each one.  When the kids line up there are no bodies touching each other.  Everyone know that they must be on a set of footprints and that they cannot move forward until the set in front of them is empty.  This eliminates a lot of bottle-necking!

The sink itself has a single set of footprints.  There's a large gap in-between the line of prints and the sink to give the child at the sink enough room to actually turn and walk away without bumping into anyone.  The next person DOES NOT MOVE until those sink prints are empty.  

If I see creepers (kids who move off the prints and start creeping forward) they are sent right back to the prints they stepped off of - or to the last set of prints in the line (depending on other behavioral factors) to wait all over again.  The prints work great for setting up painting supplies too.  They all wait nicely on the prints to get their things - no shoving, no bumping, no pushing, no thumping!  

I've been using the prints for two years now and I cannot believe what a difference it has made!  I wish I had thought of it sooner.  My only word of advice if you try it too is to make sure that the color you pick to put down is gender neutral.  I had blue and purple prints in a pattern last year. Some of my "macho" boys wouldn't step on the purple prints because that was a "girly" color.  Funny how not one girl had trouble stepping on a "boy" color!  I went with red this year and have had no problems.