Dad Shows Off The Concerning Art Project Assigned To His Toddler At Preschool — ‘What Happened To Macaroni Art’
Why would a teacher think this was an appropriate assignment for a toddler?
Urbanscape | Shutterstock By virtue of sending their kids to preschool, parents become the daily recipients of handmade art projects from their toddlers. In winter, kids make paper snowflakes and Christmas ornaments. In the fall, they color in the outlines of leaves, to teach them about the changing seasons.
Yet one preschool took true creative liberty with their art projects, as one parent was confronted by the disturbing and darkly funny masterpiece their child brought home.
The dad showed off the concerning art project that was assigned to his toddler at preschool.
His wife captured the reveal on video, as the dad came into the living room holding two pieces of paper.
“What’s the question?” she asked, which the dad answered with a question of his own: “Do you think our three-year-old at our church-sponsored preschool should be tracing and coloring the events of 9/11?”
The dad turned the picture around to reveal a page from a coloring book featuring an airplane flying into the Twin Towers.
The toddler made a valiant artistic effort with the 9/11 theme, coloring in the smoke plumes rising from the building with a yellow crayon. He also drew a series of green scribbles to add his own flare to the wildly age-inappropriate drawing.
The mom screeched with laughter, asking the question on everyone’s mind: “What?”
“That is the last thing I expected,” she said, laughing even harder.
“I’ve just been staring at it in the kitchen,” the dad said.
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He flipped the paper to reveal a second page that their toddler colored in at preschool, reading off the phrase “Never Forget.”
The mom cackled with incredulous glee before making a very valid point about the date, declaring, “It’s July 31.”
In addition to the fact that the 9/11 memorial coloring activity took place in the middle of summer, the parents’ reaction captured just how bizarre it was to show that shocking imagery to preschool-aged children.
People came to the comments with questions of their own, with one person asking, ‘What happened to macaroni art?’
“That is equal parts hilarious and terrifying,” someone else wrote.
The mom added her own analysis in the comments, calling the project “The exact opposite of anxiety relief coloring books.”
The events of 9/11 were a world-altering tragedy, changing everything from geopolitical policies to how we go through airport security, yet one has to wonder, as these parents did, why, exactly, toddlers were being exposed to the subject.
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The mom shared the explanation she received from her son’s preschool about why they were given 9/11-themed coloring books.
“We did ask about this,” she said in a follow-up post. “The best answer that we got was that the summer’s theme was ‘Dancing Through the Decades,’ so that's what they chose for the 2000s.”
“They did say they had a whole slew of things to choose from in the 2000s and that this particular teacher just landed on that one,” she continued.
“At least they could have done a page that said ‘Facebook,’ and then they could have colored the letters, maybe learned age-appropriate things,” the mom said, highlighting the sheer absurdity of introducing the concept of a terrorist attack to incredibly young kids.
Someone in the comments noted the incongruity between the preschool’s chosen theme, “Dancing Through the Decades,” and the coloring book itself, suggesting that the true theme was “Dancing Through the Darkness of the Decades.”
“It is so wild that they did that, but I love how you guys are handling it with a little bit of a sense of humor,” one person commented.
Dealing with life’s hardships by using humor is an essential coping mechanism. Finding the funny parts of raising kids is another crucial skill, especially when faced with the unexpected, as these parents seem to have mastered.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.