AUBURN - During a vacation from school, it usually isn't too long before the common complaint of “there's nothing to do” creeps in.

All this week, the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center will be trying to help alleviate that cry with Winter Art Camp 2008.

The long-running program is an off-shoot of other programs the museum hosts, like its summer art camps, that are designed to introduce children to a variety of artistic styles and mediums.

For the past several years, Herman Avenue Elementary School art teacher Jessica Rice has been involved with making many of these camps a reality.

“I've been involved with things like the summer camps and this and Art After School for the past five or six years off and on,” Rice said. “At one of the shows I got to know the director and she asked if I'd like to get involved during breaks and things and I thought it would be a great idea.”

The week-long program is divided into two sessions with projects geared toward children from the ages of 6 to 8 and another for students 9 to 12.

This diversity is something that caught Rice's interest almost immediately.

“It is a bigger group,” Rice said. “You get a different group of students that don't all go to the same school and that aren't all the same age. It is a broader group to work with and I think it gives the kids the chance to work with a different educator from the community, too.”

And with each age group given two-hour sessions as compared to the usual 40 minutes once or twice a week that students may get in school, it also offers Rice the opportunity to tackle different kinds of projects than might normally be seen in a classroom setting.

“You have a lot more time to work with,” Rice said. “You can work with different mediums. Like we'll be doing sculptures using air dry clay of dinosaurs that is something you normally wouldn't try to do in a regular 40 minute art class. We'll also be painting with acrylics. That is something you wouldn't do in school, it can be permanent and it is pricey but here we have the room and we have the time and we can try different things and give the kids the chance to try different types of mediums and different styles.”

Rice's efforts to find new and interesting projects and mediums for the students to work in has gone over well with many in her classes.

Earlier in the week, Rice presented a project on dragons, looking at the mythology associated with the creatures through various cultures, particularly in the Orient, and then letting students create their own version. A project many in the class were still excited about.

“The dragons were a lot of fun,” said Hunter Hill, 7, of Casey Park Elementary School. “We learned about them and the parts of them and what they look like and all that stuff and then we got to draw and color our own. I really liked that the best so far.”

For some students like Matthias Ballard, 8, of Casey Park, these classes have been something he has regularly attended.

“I've been here for a couple of years,” Ballard said. “I like to draw; I like to draw cartoons and stuff. It's a lot of fun.”

It is this joy in art that Rice hopes all the students that visit the museum this week can take away with them.

“Mostly I just want everybody to have a good time,” Rice said. “But I also want them to have the chance to do something different and to learn to share their ideas and to help one another and learn and work with different mediums in art.”