Shouldn't these instructions be easier?

My kindergartener came home with homework last night. Fortunately, the Monday Mail warned us of the impending homework, so we were watching for it, checking the backpack at 5 pm instead of 6 am.

This is not his first homework. Actually, they sent some home last year as "practice," which means you don't really get a grade, but you can do it if you want. Obviously this is a young kid phenomenon. Older kids know that if there's no credit given, no homework will be done.

The homework was working on -op words. There were these little squares at the bottom with different letters to add to the -op. Fine. I've seen similar worksheets already, so I knew what the result should look like, but as a good kindergarten parent, I read the directions. Whoa. The directions said something about upper case letters written on back and cutting them out and moving them around. What?!! That's not what we're supposed to do is it? There aren't any upper case letters! And what's with the cutting? How do they write on the lines if you cut up the back? Good grief.

I decided to give the sheet to my son and see if he knew what to do. I'm not sure if he actually knew, but I let him do it the way he wanted.

Shouldn't these directions be easier to follow? And if we aren't supposed to follow the directions as written, a little note might help. Last week when he was sick, he came home with a pumpkin man with dotted lines around the separate pieces of the guy-- shirt, shoes, pants. No instructions. I told him to color it, cut it out, and stick it to some construction paper. I'm pretty sure that was wrong, because the shoes and hat were all together and didn't look good cut out. But oh well, no instructions to me means "make something up. it doesn't matter." So we did.

Am I dumber than a kindergartener? Why am I having so much trouble figuring these out? I think maybe I'm a little too anal-retentive about getting the assignment perfect. There's probably some C-student, laid back mom somewhere who doesn't even care as long as their kid's name is on it. A happy medium is probably what I should be striving for...