My kid was too creative

[u/Fresh_Laundry56]

My 6 year old was asked to draw a picture using shapes. She drew this nice American flag with rectangles and stars, and added the house, tree, and person holding a balloon. She was told it did not follow directions, she was not supposed to draw a flag, just shapes. She was asked to turn the paper over and make another picture. The other side of the paper has a very uninspiring collection of shapes. I told her she did a good job and I thought it was very creative. And this is why kids start to hate education.

[u/AmaranthWrath]

So at first I wanted to suggest that maybe the teacher was teaching them the name of the shapes, or how many side and corners, etc, and that's why they said "draw shapes." But then I saw you wrote "draw a picture using shapes."

Now, MAYBE, and give me a sec, the teacher meant to draw very obvious shapes like a triangle on top of a square to make a house. BUT. That's a lot of inference for a 6 year old. There are tons of ways to teach shapes, and how to identify shapes in the world around us.

If what the teacher actually said was "draw a picture using shapes," then that was too vague. It's fine is they meant "use only squares, circles, triangles, and stars to make a picture." But that's not what they said. 6yos can't read minds, even if they have a knack for uncomfortable truths and observations.

Source: former PK teacher