The Visual Arts include a wide array of media, tools and processes. The areas most people associate with the visual arts include drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and photography. There are, however, many other areas that fall entirely or partially within the visual arts, ranging from design areas such as architecture and the built environment, fiber and clothing to the folk arts and from crafts to video animation.<br /> One of the challenges to art educators as they design local curricula is to select appropriately among the many media available, choosing those that provide the best vehicle for their students to meet local program goals and objectives by creating and responding to art. In other words, curriculum objectives should drive the choice of media, rather than vice versa. Students need breadth, through experiencing and working with a variety of media, and depth, through mastering at least a few media sufficiently that they are able to use them to express or communicate their ideas and feelings.<br /> Through those experiences, they also need to gain insight into the enormous body of visual work that has been created throughout the centuries, from early cave paintings to the present.<br /> Parents, preschools, and elementary schools should offer young children opportunities to experiment with and develop skills in using a variety of materials to create visual images. Children in Grades K-8 should be encouraged to use and extend their visual imaginations through creating their own art work and studying others’ work, in required art classes under the guidance of expert art teachers. <br />All teachers should encourage students to draw on the skills they develop in art classes to express their ideas in visual form, such as by illustrating whole-language books, designing figures and illustrations to enhance their social studies or science presentations, and designing and decorating their classrooms and school environment. Students should be encouraged to apply their visual understandings across the curriculum as well, such as by identifying and interpreting the wealth of visual symbols encountered in their daily lives.<br /> By the time their required art sequence ends in grade 8, all students should be able to communicate effectively through a variety of two- and three-dimensional art media, including electronic media. High schools should offer elective sequences that continue growth in those media, as well as Advanced Placement courses in areas such as studio art and art history for advanced and highly motivated students.<br /> Students also benefit from integrated arts experiences, i.e., those that involve more than one art form. Each of the four arts disciplines at least occasionally occurs in combination with each of the others. Dance is usually accompanied by music, and is often inspired by a particular piece of music. Visual artists work with producers to develop costumes and scenery for works of theatre. There are various genres of musical theatre, such as opera and American Broadway musicals, that combine all four art forms. Performance art usually blends visual arts elements with theatre, and often incorporates music, media arts, and dance. <br />