The Flower Baby project is a Psychology course standard. Each student takes full responsibility for their flour baby and must care for it and watch it throughout their days at or away from school for two weeks.
Psych student Myles Harris found the activity challenging. “Caring for the baby is practically a hassle. It’s very hard to remember it wherever you go,” he said.
The practical nuisance may not have been true to real life parenting. Harris said, “You don’t literally have to feed the baby, but you do have to write journal entries when you hypothetically do. You also have to write journal entries about other stuff as well.”
“I think that it shows us students the challenges of actually having to be a parent and the responsibilities that come with it. The flour babies are a lot simpler than real babies, and yet still very hard to take care of. I couldn’t imagine what taking care of a real baby would be like,” Bailey Yuen said.
This project also teaches developmental psychology. During the unit, students learn about the developmental and biological changes that occur to humans throughout their life cycle.
Psychology teacher Ryan Boyd said, “When I first announced that we are doing flour babies, there were cheers and excitement, but as the project progressed they became more knowledgable as to what this project entails and the responsibility that comes with it.”
Another responsibility that comes with taking care of the flour baby is being able to find “child care” for the babies when the student has an event that the baby cannot attend. Boyd believes this is the most challenging part of the project because many kids have multiple extracurriculars after school.
Whenever the student feeds, changes the babies clothes, or finds care for the baby, they must write a journal entry about their task. About 1 or 2 entries a day is what most students do, according to Harris.
