ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – There are several new buildings included in the bright, colorful Master Plan that Wanda Price keeps in her office.

Price, the coordinator for the Coastal Art Center of Orange Beach, can point to each and say what is planned for the space if donations and funding or grants allow them to be built.

One is conspicuously larger than the others. It’ll house the center’s popular After School Arts Program, also called ASAP.

“We have a very extensive afterschool arts program,” Price said. “We stay maxed out in the classes which is why the master plan has a double children’s studio. Eventually, someday, having two children’s studios will allow us to do what we want to do and really not have to turn the kids away.”

Children now ride an art center van from both Orange Beach and Gulf Shores Elementary schools when the normal school day is over.

“Right now we’re doing a pottery course and we turned away as many children as we were able to accept which makes us feel really bad,” Price said. “We have to turn a lot of children away in the After School Arts Program.”

The courses are offered to first through sixth graders each school day from 3-6 p.m. (class time is 3:30-5 p.m.). An additional class for middle and high school students is offered on Thursday afternoons.

On a recent Tuesday an enthusiastic group from Orange Beach Elementary School came streaming up the driveway to meet program director Belinda Butler.

“They get off the bus and come running down the driveway asking ‘what’s for snack?’” Butler said. “We have a snack out here on the side and they play for a while and then we have class.”

The van then heads to Gulf Shores to pick up those students while the Orange Beach students kick balls and run around the center’s grounds or enjoy snacks.

“We enjoy them,” Butler said of the kids. “We try to make it fun as well as a learning experience. Our primary focus is not after care, its education.

“Our classes aren’t just to keep them busy. They’re learning.”

The center offers four six-week terms during the school year and each has different areas of focus. The term that just ended on May 25 offered public art/creative writing on Mondays, pottery on Tuesdays, voice on Wednesdays, drawing on Thursdays and performing arts on Fridays.

Oftentimes several children from the same family enroll and several kids who are now too old for most of the courses sign up to help out, Butler said.

Registration closes Friday for the center’s Summer Arts Camp, hosted by Friends of the Arts is for rising first through rising seventh graders.

For the first time, SAC 2012 is offering a limited enrollment KinderArts class for children who will be in K5 in the fall of 2012. No more than 15 children will be accepted for this class, which will be from 9 a.m.-noon each day of camp in a self-contained classroom.

The camp runs from June 25-29.