As promised, I am compiling all of my chocolate unit study resources in one place just in case anyone wants to take their own chocolate journey. Before I begin listing everything, I would like to first clarify how I go about organizing our unit studies. First, I look for ideas on the Internet and bookmark, pin (Pinterest), write down, etc. any ideas that I like. Basically I do a virtual brainstorm and wrap my head around what's out there, what I want to cover, what I need to create, find, order, etc. Then, I hit the library and get every book in the world on our topic. Every. Book. After that, I look through everything and pick and choose the basics of our unit study. I add in some extras to create the ambiance, then the boys and I explore. Beyond the basics of what I have planned (the bare bones of the topic), I allow them to shape the unit study. For example, they really got into the Mayan culture and how they prepared the first chocolate drink. So, we spent a good deal of time studying the Mayan customs, lands, and cultures, and tried our best to replicate the traditional drink. They didn't get as interested in how chocolate spread through England, so we covered the material, but didn't spend a long time on it. They really enjoyed delving into the ecology of the cacao tree, but not as much the technical process of making the chocolate (to my surprise). So, while we covered all the material, there was a natural flow to where we took the study even deeper based on their interests.
Anyway, on to the sweet stuff!
To cover Geography, Science, and History (among other subjects, but these are the main ones), we used these resources:
We started our unit study with this fun QR Web Quest. I had intended to complete 2 pages a day, but the boys were so excited, we ended up completing the entire quest in 3 days.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chocolate-Web-Quest-34935
Our adventure continued with Amanda Bennett's Chocolate Challenge! There was a little overlap between the two, but while the QR Quest took the boys to web pages, Amanda Bennett's study uses a lot more videos. The boys liked both. We didn't do the included lapbook because they are not lapbook kids. Instead, I printed out the map pages, and a few of the others that weren't repetitive, found some pages from notebookingpages.com, and the boys made notebooks. That works better for them. Then, we just worked through the material all together on the computer while lounging on the floor. We didn't watch every single video, I thought it got a little redundant, and we had already studied a lot of rain forest information, but we like her unit studies and will use them again as a resource.
http://www.unitstudy.com/ChocolateChallenge.html
To cover Reading and Writing (the boys also follow a basic, grade-level appropriate Language Arts curriculum to fill in any gaps we may miss in our unit studies), we used these resources:
We read Charlie and Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, and also the biography Who Was Roald Dahl? by True Kelley. We utilized several different approaches to reading the story, based on our mood of the day. Sometimes, we'd buddy read (each person reads a page or paragraph), I'd read aloud, or the boys read to themselves. We also had our "book basket" time, which is 20 minutes of reading from a huge basket of books I selected from the library. Anything I could make relate, in any way, I threw it in the basket. The boys and I love book basket time.
While reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we completed this packet from Teachers Pay Teachers. We played bingo, worked on vocabulary words, and completed the dodecahedron. We did not fill out the chapter by chapter writing pages. Between the notebooking pages in the Chocolate Challenge, their regular language arts work, their daily handwriting practice, and the dodecahedron pages, that was plenty of writing for my boys.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-Dodecahedron-Puzzle-Novel-Study-Bingo-1258919
For math (again, we follow a grade-level math program in addition (get it...addition) to what we do within our unit studies) I found a couple of books that we played around with:
That's A Possibility! by Bruce Goldstone, which led to several days of figuring out probabilities. That was the hidden jewel in the book basket that REALLY engaged Lucas. We had fun trying to figure out the probability of each golden ticket winner in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and many other things in our lives.
The other book was More M & M's Math by Barbara Barbieri McGrath. This book was a little simplistic for my boys, but it was fun to read through, and we had a good time.
We also did a lot of hands-on fun in this unit. There are a lot of chocolate/candy inspired ideas drifting around the 'net. We couldn't have fit all of them in, that's for sure! Here were some of things we did to add a little extra fun to the study:
I ordered raw cacao beans off Amazon, and we compared the raw beans to 3 different types of "modern" chocolate (90% cacao, 65% cacao milk chocolate, and white chocolate). We also roasted the cacao beans in our cast iron pan, attempted to grind them in our mortar and pestle (but switched to our magic bullet), and added water to recreate the "drink of the gods". We did the same process, but added sugar, cinnamon, and milk to recreate the first hot chocolate, and again to recreate the first chocolate bars.
We baked brownies from a store bought mix after finishing the historical readings about how chocolate spread and became commercial.
We looked up ancient and modern art with cacao as the subject, then tried our hand at our own art featuring the cacao bean. Let me tell you, none of us are artists, but that was a fun, fun project.
We did an experiment to see which chocolate melted the fastest in the microwave, and looked at the coco butter content to see if there was any correlation between the two, or other factors in why the melting time was different (Sorry, no print out or link to this one. I was just winging it because the boys like to microwave and melt stuff).
I purchased a "create your own candy bar" kit and we designed, labeled, and created our own signature bars a la Willy Wonka. That was fun! We even "filmed" our own commercials.
We made and played with chocolate scented play-doh. Still a hit in our house.
Finally, to end the unit, we are planning on visiting a real life chocolate factory here in town How cool is that!! We haven't taken our big field trip just yet, we have been trying to finish up our unit, but it's coming up soon!
Whew! I'm sure I forgot a few things here and there, but that's the bulk of our studies. I hope you guys have as much fun as we did doing this chocolate unit study. Please comment if you decide to give it a go, and let me know how it turns out!!! I'd love to hear about your experience! :)
