From the classrooms …

While parents are invited on Monday mornings to learn more about healthy eating, cooking and nutrition with Mim Marwan from Cornell University – Cooperative Extension New York City, children are hands on cooking this week … in the Library. Do not panic, everything is under control! Laurel Gilkerson, our new PS 217 Wellness in the Schools Chef is jumping right into cooking during the first WITS cooking Lab of this school year! The lucky grades are Kindergarten, First and Second Grades and they will be making yummy Apple Cheddar Melts. It’s the apple season and what better way to add extra fiber and vitamin C to our/their diet than incorporating apples in a sweet and savory melt in your mouth snack!

For those who are not familiar with it, Wellness in the Schools (WITS) is a national nonprofit that teaches kids healthy habits and how to learn and live better. Thanks to the efforts of the Parents Association of PS 217, our school is now in its second year of partnership with WITS. A great component of this partnership are the 4 yearly labs, where students from Kindergarten to 5th grade learn actual hands on cooking skills, from chopping and dicing to cooking from scratch and incorporating healthy foods into their diets. Each lab has a learning component as well, explaining children the nutritional value and the importance of the food they prepare. They prep, they, cook, they taste!

Keep an eye for the recipe and encourage them to share with you what they have learned! Cooking together with children not only instills healthy eating habits, but also has numerous learning benefits, from laying the foundation of basic math concepts through measuring, counting and adding, to improving literacy and comprehension skills through vocabulary expansion and the concept of sequencing in the cooking process.