Ashley Johnson bubbled as she flipped through the stack of papers in her classroom.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “They really did a good job.”

“They” are students in her sixth-grade creative arts class at Charles Henderson Middle School who had just completed “the leaf project.”

It’s a simple concept.

“I used a program called ‘Talents Unlimited’ with my classes,” Johnson said. “The goal is to take an ordinary shape and create it into something unique.”

In this case, that shape was a leaf.

“The goal is to be on the only one to come up with a particular idea,” she said.

And, she added, most students succeed.

In the drawings, students used the leaf shape for ladybugs and animals, glasses and guitars, birds and lizards … all of which surprised Johnson.

“I was very impressed with them,” she said. “I hope you will be, too.”