Learning Objectives:Creative vs restrictive

During mathematics class in the first term of FS 2 (reception year), I had an interesting experience with a mathematics activity sheet. The Lesson objective was to correctly count to 10 showing one to one correspondence and the task was to colour in 8 circles out of a 10. There were several rows of circles where the children could colour in different numbers ranging from 5-10.
It looked like this:

                                                           source: mininghumanities.com

Most of the children could do this easily, however, there was a little boy who for some reason would colour in only two circles leaving 8 uncoloured when it got to number 8.
I explained the task again to him, we counted the circles together and then I asked if he would try to do it again, to colour in 8 circles.
When I went over to him, he'd done the same thing again. He was working in reverse for number 8.

We went over the instructions the third time, but he did the same thing when we got to 8.
So, I let that pass and proceeded to reflect on what exactly my learning intention was.
He was showing one to one correspondence but differently. In fact, he was showing it uniquely because no one else did that! He was showing me that if he coloured in only 2 circles out of 10, he'd have 8 circles left.
I thought about how often we try to box in children or program them to produce a certain type of result (consciously or unconsciously).
How restrictive are our learning objectives as teachers? especially as early years practitioners.
Do we often focus on our instruction and the outcomes of our instruction or do we leave enough room for a creative expression of the same objective?
Granted, we as teachers may be restricted by the curriculum, long-term/mid-term planning and line managers. Perhaps it is this restriction that we pass down to the children. I believe that if the creative outcomes from our lesson show the uniqueness of each classroom and each child, we can convince the senior management to make a restrictive curriculum more creative.

As the world evolves, we need more creativity, more children who go against the grain and more uniqueness. More than ever, we have a role to play in harnessing that creativity and not suppressing it.