Next time you find yourself in the vicinity of San Jose on the last Sunday of any month, visit KidsArtSunday at the San Jose Museum of Art. Five families did on May 25, and kids ranging in age from 20 months up to nearly half a century old enjoyed themselves. On KidsArtSundays each child gets to escort two adults in for free; so we were all covered.

Most of us signed our kids up for the Movement Class at 11. However, we mistook the Jose Limon Dance Troupe's presentation for the class and sat in on that instead. We were glad we did. The dancers performed excerpts of a modern dance based on Ecclesiastes' verse "To every time...". Before each interlude, they explained which part of the verse this excerpt related to and which body movements to look for. After each interlude, the dancers re-created individual movements that evoked particular themes. Lovely to watch, to listen to, and to learn about. The setting was lovely as well. Parents and kids sat on mats in a long, thin room. The dancers performed not two feet in front of us, on our level. Behind them were interesting paintings of dogs and horses.

After watching the dancers, we wandered the museum. My youngest particularly admired the bronzes of horses. Much of the bronze was painted -- in some cases it was painted to look like wood, in others, it looked like paper mache'. We also enjoyed William Wegman's Polaroids of his dogs. And we could not tear ourselves away from the video he made, called "Alphabet Soup". In the video, Wegman's dogs arrange their bodies into the shapes of the letters in the alphabet, balance alphabet blocks on appropriate parts of their bodies and, in truly hysterical sequences, add ingredients to their alphabetical soup (and partake of the soup and its ingredients as they go along). We finally broke down and bought a copy.

At one, some of us checked out the Movement Class we'd missed in the morning. Although we'd been warned to sign up in advance, there was no crowd. The woman leading the class, Ann Walton, taught the kids how to flair their nostrils like horses, gallop like horses, think like horses. And, she pointed out how the paintings by Basil Blackshaw evoked the special relationship between horses and people. Not every child understood everything that was said, but they learned a little and moved a little and their parents did too.

The museum is a kid-friendly place, sunlit and uncluttered. One of my concerns was that many of the paintings hang pretty low -- too low to prevent children from touching. The guards did not appreciate when kids got too close, but they restrained themselves well; they were aware that we were trying to teach the children to keep their hands to themselves.

Finally, artistically enriched but truly hungry, we left the museum. Some of us partook of the "Bay Area's Best Sourdough" at Le Boulanger, about a block from the museum. The kids mostly got the kids' sandwich meals ($3.50 -- kind of expensive for 3 slices of turkey, 2 slices of bread, a drink and a cookie). But we all LOVED the bread.