Baffling spelling homework sent home with first-grader leaves dad utterly 'stumped'

Homework should challenge kids just enough to help them learn new things. But sometimes, it’s so tricky that even parents get stumped. That’s exactly what happened to one dad, u/Thin_Butterscotch827, who shared his son’s puzzling literature homework on Reddit. It was so difficult, even adults were left scratching their heads.

"My son's 1st grade homework has stumped me entirely. 8/10 solved, I think?" the dad wrote in the post. It was a fill-in-the-blanks spelling worksheet, with options such as fist, fast, puff, pass, hiss, mess, less, gas, mass and class. The first sentence was, "The snake will __ at you," to which the answer would perhaps be hiss. The second one was, "Let's clean up this __," which would be filled with "mess." The next one was, "Dad will __ the slow car." The answer would be "pass." Gas would definitely come with, "We need __ for the car." However, the sixth sentence, "What is the __ of a pen," can be quite confusing, especially for a first grader. The proposed answer was "mass." The next two questions were again relatively simple.

"There is a __ of smoke" and "I love my __." which would be "puff" and "class," respectively. However, the ninth question poses the biggest concern so far, as none of the options make complete sense with the sentence which reads as follows, "Our __ has white stars." The dad, Gary, told Newsweek, "I posted asking for help because we had no clue what the correct answers could be. It's been decades since we were in first grade and maybe there was something we could have missed." He added, "My son said he was finished except for two of the questions and I tried to help. [I] didn't want to be 'that parent' that tries to know more than the teacher but is actually wrong."

Addressing the comments on his post, the dad concluded, "Those that offered their thoughts came to the same conclusion as we did, that there was an error with the worksheet. It was a relief to know I wasn't just dumb. There was no obvious answer except that it was an error." u/premierechatpro wrote, "6) Mass. I'm not sure how a first-grader is going to know that, but yes. 10) I know it's not on there, but flag is the only word that makes sense to me. Sometimes, problems get copied/pasted from different assignments and the wordbanks forget to get changed. I'm assuming that's what's happening here." 

u/concreteclown commented, "Aside from the general nonsense, 'There are less boys than girls' is not a correct sentence. It would be correct to say, 'There are fewer boys than girls.' But that is really the least of the problems here." u/Oh_My_Monster joked, "Number 8 could be 'I love my gas' because everyone loves their own brand and then that would allow number 9 to be 'Our class has white stars' as a statement of white power and racism. Then, number 5 could change to 'We need mass for the car' since first graders are learning about Newtonian physics. Number 6 can really be anything since it's a question. 'What's the fist of the pen?' I sure don't know, so it's a valid question."