LAWRENCE, Kan. — Denise Johnson has a winning strategy for getting kids to eat their vegetables.

It’s simple as pie. Or, in this case, muffins. Johnson, the Lawrence school district’s assistant director of health and wellness, tells a cafeteria full of third-graders to add what looks like a cup’s worth of spinach into their mixing bowls.

Weirdly, they don’t seem too put off by the idea of green, nutrient-packed muffins.

“When they grow it and they make it, they eat it,” Johnson said, explaining the success of the district’s Farm 2 School program.

Connecting kids to their food — from planting to harvesting to cooking and eating — is a core tenet of the U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative, known for its school gardens and food-purchasing partnerships between schools and local farmers. The Lawrence school district, an early adapter of the program, recently added cooking classes to its Farm 2 School curriculum.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the lessons, funded through a recent “Serving Up MyPlate” grant from the Kansas State Department of Education, will be implemented across all third-grade classrooms in the Lawrence district’s 14 elementary schools.

Hillcrest was only the second school to receive a visit from the district’s Farm 2 School team this semester, said Jennie Lazarus, outdoor education supervisor for Lawrence Public Schools.

“Farm 2 School is about the nutritional education and us working with natural sugars in cooking lessons,” said Johnson, who also teaches students how to read nutrition labels as part of the unit.