Flour Sacks Provide Parenting Practice

Intro to psychology students practiced parenting skills in a unit about child development. Students created “babies” from flour sacks and other materials with strict guidelines to never leave their child unattended.

Students named their charges and were responsible for working their after school schedules to allow them to care for the babies. Daily logs provided insight into how each student accommodated the child, allowing for a better appreciating for the numerous jobs a parent must complete each day.

“We are learning a little bit about the early stages of development and different theories on what affects their development. This project ties to that unit. It also gives students a fraction of a sense of what the responsibility is like,” said pychology teacher Ryan Boyd.

For the week of April 18, each psychology student carried their flour baby in class.

“I give the kids the option to take the flour baby home on Friday and a lot more of the kids this year wanted to take their baby.” said Boyd. The other option which, in the past, has been more popular is to leave the kid with the teacher at the end of the project. Although it did not show the full scope of parenting a young child, it may have helped some students discover their feelings towards childrearing.