Ceramics are a “10” activity for kids in the summertime. All the energy and creativity required during the school year can be focused on something totally absorbing and fun.

Art Camp 12 held this past week at the City of Selma Ceramics Center was virtually sold out well in advance of its opening last Monday.

The program offering two weeks of fun for 50 children – one each in June and July – is so popular that many children go year after year. Art camp 13, scheduled for July 5-9, has openings “in the single digits, according to Candi Duncan, director of the summer program and of the Ceramic Arts Program.

So call now if you want your child to enroll your child.

Participants come from city, county and private schools.

Many of the children are visiting their grandparents who live in Selma, Duncan said.

Art Camp 12 included children from Auburn, Birmingham and Oklahoma City as well as Selma and Dallas County.

Duncan said that once children get a taste of the program they usually keep coming until they get their driver’s license.

Activities offered to children enrolled in the program include such crafts as mosaic, dyotaku (rubber fish prints), watercolors, spooling (a form of French knitting), weaving, and wire art taught by nationally recognized folk artist Charlie Lucus. Duncan said that Lucus has work exhibited in the Gugenheim in New York City and in France.

A hot lunch is included with the program. Spooling is taught by Linda Oliver from England who’s been in the United States for 30 years, 25 of them in Selma. Duncan said that all the kids like it.

Also teaching is year-round ceramics center volunteer Ruth Bjelke. Youth assist the teachers in the program each summer, earning required community service hours for the high school diploma. Cain Sommerville, 16, a rising 10th grader at Morgan

Academy, was helping out in Art Camp 12.

For information call (334) 874-2143.