The Cooking Room is an elementary school program whose goal is to promote food literacy to kindergarten through 5th grade students. We currently operate through a dedicated kitchen classroom at PS3 in New York City.

The program is the first of its kind: lessons take place during the school day, so students learn how to work with fresh ingredients to prepare healthy food as part of their daily field of study.

Teachers, professional chefs, and chef-instructors come together in our food/science/nutrition lab to educate kids with grade-appropriate food lessons that incorporate science, math, reading, and nutrition. Our goal is to organically integrate food education into the curriculum standards of the school, and to serve as a model for other schools.

Spearheaded by PS3 parents Chef Zak Pelaccio, Claudia Bellini, and Marion Rosenfeld, the room is run by a team of volunteers including graduates and employees of the ICC/FCI, professional chefs, a nutrionist, a food scientist, and several food writers/educators.

With the generous financial help of the ICC/FCI, we were able to create a 16-lesson curriculum. Lesson plans tie in with the Common Core State Standards and dovetail with what is already being taught in the classroom, whether it's reading comprehension, scientific observation, or fractions; this way we can reinforce students' academic core-standards while also introducing a whole new world of flavors, cooking techniques and nutrition. This school year, over 600 elementary school students will participate in the program.

The Cooking Room is a tax-­exempt organization under sec+on 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Cooking Room is run entirely by volunteers, there is no overhead. Here is where your money goes:

INGREDIENTS
$30 pays for one child to follow the program
$900 pays for one whole class to follow the program

EQUIPMENT
$700 pays for one refrigerator
$90 pays for 70 ramekins
$25 pays for a month's worth of cleaning supplies