inventiveness, exploring ideas from a variety of angles, crossing artistic domains (e.g., singing while painting), combining media (e.g., collage with drawing) (35).
Such creativity has long been associated primarily with the arts but it is increasingly understood that it applies in most areas of life. Since it has been shown that "classroom experiences affect children's creativity later in life" and that specific "creative thinking skills" are something children can acquire it is important that they be emphasized from the earliest grades (Saarilahti, Cramond, & Sieppi 326). The emphasis on creative thinking in early education (and sometimes throughout the elementary school years) is placed on courses, or occasional sessions, focusing on the visual arts. This is logical since the elements and materials that are imaginatively recombined in creative art making (unlike words, formulas, and data) can immediately be used by children and because most early art classes are unencumbered by a specific set of complex data and skills that children are expected to master.
There are, of course, skills to be acquired in art classes, such as "manipulating materials, showing muscular coordination, controlling basic techniques" and developing sensitivity to the "elements, principles and processes of the specific arts
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