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Sheila Crye leaned over the table in the kitchen of the Glen Haven military housing community center in Silver Spring Saturday, her hands expertly slicing a clove of garlic for the nine attentive students in her weekly cooking class.

Two students, Michael Wright III and Quatarious Hodges, both 9, began to fidget across the countertop, laughing at some private joke. Soon a stern look from Michael's mother, Denise Wright, put their attention fully back on Crye as the kindly instructor handed out cooking knives to the class for them to try. Despite her love for teaching the younger generation the tricks of the culinary trade, Crye is more than happy to have the students' parents in the room to help maintain focus.

"For me and Michael, this is our first time in the kitchen together," Denise Wright said as her son maneuvered his knife over a potato later in the three-hour class. "It's hard to get kids into anything these days other than video games. Michael has his friend here, so I don't think you can get it any better: food, friends, fun ..."

A total of 10 participants — five children and at least one of their parents — took part in Crye's four-week class focusing on winter comfort foods, ending with a recipe for Teriyaki flank steaks Saturday. In her lessons, Crye attempted to not only teach the students how to safely use cooking materials, but also the importance of preparing healthy recipes.

"This is my effort for public health," she said with a grin as she showed the students how to safely cook potato cubes on the stove. "[The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health] is doing a study with me on the effectiveness of teaching kids culinary skills so that they have a hand in the production of healthy dishes, because research has shown that if they help produce the food, they're more likely to eat it."

Thanks to a year-long grant from the Montgomery County Collaboration Council for Children, Youth and Families, Crye is able to offer two six-week afterschool cooking classes at Sligo Middle School and three "How to Cook'' sessions in the area, including the winter comfort foods class. By first finding out what the children in her classes like to eat, Crye tries to find healthier alternative recipes to teach them, such as sautéed potatoes instead of french fries.

For the parents, the transformation in the children can seem magical, according to Earl Lavenhouse. His daughter, Trinity Lavenhouse, 9, has benefited greatly from the four-week class.

"Before this class, I would only really let her cook scrambled eggs, but now she can cook all sorts of stuff," he said as he watched his daughter and her friend, Nyla DeValle, also 9, slice potatoes for the meal's side dish. "In the first lesson, we were baking cheese biscuits, and it didn't turn out very well; we ended up using way too much baking soda, but you know, she was just so proud that she had worked to make something that she wanted to keep trying."

Trinity was delighted with her progress in the class, boasting of the knowledge she had learned from Crye with the supervision of her father.

"I learned that after you crack an egg, you have to wash your hands, and if the meat is all red and we get it all over our hands, we shouldn't touch anything before we wash them," she said with a shy smile.

Nearby, Hodges, whose mother had to leave the lesson early because she is pregnant and was going into labor, declared himself "the king of cooking'' and ran outside to watch Jennifer Howard grilling the marinated flank steaks. Howard's daughter, Lillian Howard, 9, stood nearby; torn between watching the grill and the playground next to the Fort Detrick-Silver Spring School Age Services Center where the class met.

"Can you make time go quicker?" Lillian wanted to know. "I'm starving!"