By Matthew Gustafson, 

One of my greatest pleasures in visiting the schools that run our CookShop Classroom program is observing how creative teachers can be when connecting our program's nutrition education messages to the other subjects they’re teaching.

Of course, CookShop’s curriculum is built to facilitate these kinds of connections.

From top: Photo by Miriam Araya; Photo by Ritamarie Pepe

I’ve seen teachers relate CookShop to math — measuring ingredients is a handy lesson in fractions, addition and multiplication. Other teachers highlight geography through discussions of farming and geographical landscapes. And I’ve seen CookShop help develop reading and writing skills, as teachers ask their students to use descriptive words to articulate and write about the way foods look, feel, smell, sound and taste.

I’m always impressed by teachers’ imagination in bringing their lessons to life, so I was especially excited to see CookShop take on a whole new educational aspect at P.S. 112 in Brooklyn!

Fourth grade photography students, inspired by the foods a younger class had used in a CookShop lesson, grabbed their cameras and set up a fresh veggie photo shoot. I’ve seen a lot of CookShop creativity, but I never expected this transformation of food into art!

“We used our imagination to create a new world with vegetables,” wrote student Susan He in a letter explaining her photos.

Whoever said you shouldn’t play with your food?!