North Park kids eat their homework!

Students at St. Patrick’s School in North Park learned last week that bread doesn’t just come from supermarket shelves. On a mission to share the tradition of baking bread at home, the King Arthur Flour Company of Norwich, Vt., was at the school to teach students to bake fresh, nutritious bread from scratch through its Life Skills Bread Baking Program.

The program visits fourth through seventh graders in schools across the country, and in the last 10 years has taught more than 100,000 schoolchildren how to bake bread. Each St. Patrick student received a bag of all-purpose flour and a bag of organic white whole-wheat flour to take home to bake bread with their families. They were to then bring their loaves back to school to be donated to Catholic Charities and Father Joe’s Villages.

Senior Life Skills Instructor Paula Gray said she loves teaching children the skill of bread baking – a hands-on way for kids to learn math, science and cultural traditions all while having fun – and hopes they bring that skill home and share it with loved ones.

“They’re learning the value and the joy of giving something back to the community,” she said.