An Ode to Tempera Cake Paints

Oh tempera cakes, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.. 1. You are easy to use, 2. You are easy to clean up, and 3. You look brilliant on white paper.

I love when new tempera cakes arrive. Their round little disc shapes fit perfectly into all sorts of fun containers. I prefer a chip dip tray that can be found at dollar stores. I know of others who use small metal containers like tuna fish cans.

This week I'm reviewing lines with my kindergarteners. We discussed and drew all sorts of lines last week, but that bored them to tears. To keep things exciting, three weeks into school I went out on a limb and did something rather scary. We painted!!
I decided to use lines, specifically curved lines, for our rainbow paintings.

First, we drew with crayon the curved lines for our rainbow so that we would have the right guide. We used Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Purple crayons in any order I felt like. Everything is up for interpretation! 

Then we painted over each line one at a time with the corresponding color paint. We start with yellow and progressively go through darker and darker colors. (This keeps my paints clean)

I think these turned out lovely. Not too shabby for three weeks in and our first time painting.

Disclaimer: I prefer the Richeson brand of tempera cake. I've used others that do not have as beautiful results. Beware cakes that are soft... they get gooey when a wet brush touches them and that's a whole other mess to deal with.
One problem have with tempera cakes are that they can be brittle. Beware the children that like to hammer their paint brushes into the cakes.