The Tarble Arts Center will continue to take registrations for its children and adult classes for the month of October until Tuesday.

The classes focus of a variety of different mediums and age groups, including children ages 4 to 7, 8 to 12 and 15 to adult.

Kit Morice, curator of education at the Tarble, said once a child is 15, they are considered an adult by the Tarble and are allowed to take the adult classes.

Morice is in charge of organizing the classes and also teaches a few of them. She said one of the more popular classes is an art education program designed for home-schooled children. The program began last spring.

“We saw other places offering something similar and recognized that this group is a growing part of our constituency,” Morice said. “We started to notice at least one or two home-schooled students were involved in each of our other classes.”

Morice said she decided to start a specific class for home-schooled students when a parent of a home-schooled student approached her.

“Her daughter was becoming more involved in other activities, and she wanted to continue art but was having a hard time finding a time to work out a time to take a class,” Morice said. “We decided to see what we could do and have found it to be a popular service.”

In order to run the classes, Morice paired with the art department.

The discussion produced an eight-week course that follows Illinois’ state requirements for art education and is taught by Eastern art students, who are at the point in their college career where they are ready to student-teach, she said.

“I work with the students to design enough curriculum for the course, but they ultimately make the lesson plans and teach it,” Morice said.

She said they have had a great turnout since the class began and have had to break it into two sections based on age group.

There are now two classes, one for students ages 4 to 7 and the other for students ages 8 to 12.

Beyond the home-schooler classes, Morice will also be teaching a stained-glass mosaic class, which she learned how to do after the Tarble hosted an artist in resident who taught her the craft.

“It’s very crafty and helps me relax from my ‘serious’ art,” she said. “It’s one of those things I don’t really have to think about, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot of fun.”

Registration for the October classes runs through Tuesday and the price depends on the cost of the materials.

The classes usually range from $40 to $60.

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].