creative thinking

In the book I read to each art class last week, before we began our International Dot Day project, one page contains the following interaction: when a young student looks at her blank piece of paper, complaining that she can’t draw, “Vashti’s teacher leaned over the blank paper. ‘Ah! A polar bear in a snowstorm,’ she said.”
Today we began a new project, emphasizing space, line, and medium. I showed each class an example of a spiderweb-like pattern of lines, instructing them to fill in the blocks between each set of lines with colour and pattern in different media. After the grade 5 class had begun the coloring portion of their artwork, I noticed one whose paper looked rather monochromatic. I walked over to him and reminded him that he was supposed to experiment with patterns as well as colours.
He nodded innocently and pointed out to me the small pair of black dots on each portion. Then he began a list, pointing to each block as he did so, “A bat in a cave. A camel in a sandstorm. A whale in the sea. A grasshopper in the grass. A polar bear in a snowstorm . . .”
I grinned and moved on, resisting the urge to smack him upside that endearingly smart-alecky little head :-)