Saturdays in Siouxland

Sioux City has an art center . . the aptly named Sioux City Art Center. Because of Leslie's interest in art, that was one of the places we visited early on. Frankly, it was a disappointment at the time. But I suppose we should have expected that. We've had a family membership at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a few years now, and to be honest, not much else in the nation can live up to that.

But the SCAC does have a lot of relatively affordable art classes, which is a good thing. Since I am NOT an artist in any way, shape or form, we relied on our homeschool co-op in Jersey for our children's art education (thank you, Janice!). The earlier-mentioned Cvrk family has a son Leslie's age who invited her to join the pottery class he's taking this fall at the Center. It happens to meet at the same time as a "Saturday Art Lesson" time, for Eastin's age. So, our art curriculum for the fall is set.

Now, Saturdays have become downtown cultural days for us. And the Art Center is starting to grow on me. There's not much in their collection, but the building is a nice place to hang out. They have a small restaurant with artsy organic food, a small nice gift shop, and a hands-on art room for the little ones.

Eastin loves her weekly art lesson. Leslie's still deciding about her pottery class. It's actually a class for high school through adult -- they let Leslie in because they had already let Micaiah in, who was her age. But she maybe isn't quite old enough. She doesn't have the strength the others do to really mold the clay on the wheel very easily. The teacher says that's OK -- that just means she has to concentrate on technique, and when the hand strength comes, she'll be all set. But Leslie gets a little discouraged. The fact that the others in the class (a small class, too) have already been doing this for a few weeks doesn't help.

But, there are new classes starting in January, and I'm sure we'll find something else she'll enjoy. I enjoy hanging out in the building and working on my lesson plans for the week. Then a walk through the enclosed, above-the-streets walkway through downtown to the library. Then a nice little lunch for us all someplace downtown . . it all makes for a good culture-rich, family-togetherness kind of Saturday. :)