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Photo: Anthony Miller

DOTING “mum” Zanab Khan (11) with her bag-of-flour baby Isha.

Pupils use flour-bag babies to learn responsible parenting

FLOUR power is helping children at Clarksfield Primary School learn about the responsibilities of being a parent.

An imaginative project lets teams of Year 6 pupils become mums and dads for a fortnight — looking after a baby made from a bag of flour.

They take it in turns to care for their baby at school and at home, earning points for everything from feeding and changing nappies to reading bedtime stories.

But they get points taken off for neglecting or damaging the babies which are wrapped in fragile tissue paper.

The project was introduced by deputy head teacher Stacey Brackenridge as part of the school’s sex-education programme.

And pupils throw themselves into the role, dressing up their babies, providing accessories and even taking them shopping in their buggies.

“I have been doing it for two years now and it has been a huge success each time.

“It’s enjoyable and the pupils learn a lot from it,” she explained

“They can’t just leave the babies with their mum and go out to play. They have to look after them and be responsible parents. If they do want a babysitter they have got to notify someone.

“When I spoke to parents about this, one mum of six said, ‘If I had known how hard it was to have a baby, I wouldn’t have had so many’.

“She said the children were getting to know how difficult it is to be a parent.”

Other schools are thinking about introducing the project which looks at the rights and responsibilities of parents and children.

It also links in with other parts of the curriculum — such as drawing graphs of points achieved in maths or writing reports — while younger children have provided a creche.

But it is not just the girls that are turning out to be good parents.

Mrs Brackenridge said: “Mixed groups of boys and girls works best as the parents bring different skills

“Initially the boys did not want to get involved.

“However, because it is competitive and there is a prize at the end they get more involved — but they are probably the ones that find it more difficult to be honest.”