Wayne Thiebaud Gum Ball Machines

Students learned about the artist Wayne Theibaud and his famous dessert paintings. For this project, we were inspired by his gum ball machines. The first day was spent printing different colored gum balls onto a white circle. To create ours, we used some cute circle sponge printers I found at Michael's that worked PERFECTLY. I passed out a small dish of paint on each table with 2-3 sponges each. Each table had a different color to start with and then they were rotated around so that eventually all colors were used by each student. For each color they did 4 balls. I had to really emphasize sharing and waiting their turn. Surprisingly, they handled it super well. The next day was spent constructing our gum ball machines with pieces of paper. I demonstrated which piece went where. The last step was giving them a Sharpie and having them write 25 cents on the front. 

Wayne Thiebaud Ice Cream Cones

For this lesson the students studied the artist Wayne Thiebaud, who is famous for his paintings of delicious desserts. They also learned how to make different values of their paint color by adding tints and shades. Each child started with a white piece of paper with a cross drawn across it, making 4 sections. I gave each table group a different ice-cream color and then walked around to add white or black at different times and they filled in each section of their paper with a different value that they mixed. After these were dry, each section was cut into an ice-cream scoop shape. Students got to choose a background color and then created a waffle cone from paper. The last step was glueing them on top of their cone with the lightest scoop on top and the darkest on the bottom. A cherry was added for fun :)