Art with reduced creativity

Sissy's school participates in a fundraiser through Display My Art, which lets parents purchase gift items with their child's artwork.  Conceptually, it's a great idea.

But in practice, Mommy is a bit disappointed in the process.  When admiring this year's artwork - a snowman (last year was a crab) with a four colored background - Sissy mentioned to Mommy that they were required to color the background in four different colors.  Further conversation led to the discovery that each child picked the colors, and drew parts a little differently, but the basic formula for the picture was required:

• Circle head (lid traced by teacher)
• Hat (standard hat shape)
• Eyes
• Carrot nose
• Smile
• Buttons on the body
• Arms
• Scarf (optional)
• Background in four colors

Some snowmen are fatter, some hats are taller, each face is a little different and there's a wide variety of background colors.  (The order numbers for Sissy's class are consecutive, so Mommy looked at a few of them.)  But wouldn't it be much more interesting if they had been told to draw a snowman in that space and given free rein to make something more distinctly theirs?