School Workshop
We can visit your school in: East Midlands, Yorkshire
Risk Assessments
Can the children help me with my chocolate packaging decisions? Chocolate is a tricky thing to package and it has to be protected to keep its taste. It can melt, it can get broken, it can get contaminated by smells so the materials and design are very important. Chocolate packaging is also crucial for branding and there are environmental considerations too. There are lots of decisions to make.
With my experience of tasting chocolate and packaging samples for other people to taste, we can look at how chocolate bars are packaged and consider the challenge of a chocolate educator wanting to send samples through the post for people to taste.
Chocolate is one of our favourite foods but not necessarily a healthy one. We learn how to taste chocolate like a chocolate judge and learn to enjoy the flavours in what we are eating. We also get to eat some of the best chocolate in the world!
We learn where this food comes from and how it is made. We look at how we have prepared chocolate through history and can crush up beans and see how they are made into chocolate. We also learn how the flavour changes as it is roasted and tempered.
Who better than the chocolate midge to show us where and how cacao is grown, the rainforest environment needed to grow this type of tree, the threats of deforestation and chocolate's role in this both good and bad, fair trade and the lives of the cocoa farmers and how we can help. We can meet some of the people and see the chocolate bars that are helping conservation projects in different environments.
We can cover all of these subjects through the audio and visual trip to a rainforest, looking at different countries that grow cacao and how they grow it, the different layers of the rainforest and how there are different types of cacao that are grown in different places and different ways.
We love chocolate and so did the Maya. But did the chocolate that the Maya drank taste like the chocolate we eat today? We can taste cocoa beans similar to the ones the Maya prized and see how they made and drank this delicious substance and how it compares to the chocolate we make and consume today.
With the help of Midge, we can look at their society, art and trade, to see how they valued chocolate and consumed it. Through the chocolate we eat, we can meet the descendants of these civilizations and see how they are still growing cacao and look at the similarities and differences in how they use cacao today.
There is so much biology to learn from chocolate and cacao. With the help of Midge we discover the habitat needed for the chocolate midges to thrive and to pollinate cacao and we look at the tree itself (cauliflory with its fruit growing from its stem), its habitat and how it grows better in a biodiverse ecosystem.
Cacao is also an important part of the food chain for many animal species and deforesting to grow cacao is a big problem. We can meet some of the people and see the chocolate bars that are helping conservation projects in different environments.
We can cover all of these subjects with the help of Midge, through the audio and visual trip to a rainforest, looking at different countries that grow cacao and how they grow it,
Yes We certainly can. Please use the form below to let us know your group's specific SEN requirements and we will get back to you with more information on how we can tailor our learning experience for your children.
★★★★★
"The children were thoroughly engaged throughout the whole workshop, applying some of
their previous knowledge about the rainforests and learning lots of ne information relating
to our current work on the Mayans." Year 5 (Including the Maya and Rainforests)"
★★★★★
"The workshop was fun, informative and presented in a way in which the children were engage from start to end. We learned more in an afternoon than we could ever learn visiting large confectionery companies which offer similar themed visits and workshops" Year 6 (The Maya)"
★★★★★
"The children (and adults) found the Cocoa Encounters workshop thoroughly enjoyable. It was well pitched, excellently resourced and well thought out - Kathryn delivered it brilliantly. I like how the workshop was tailored to our curriculum learning and really challenged the children to think about where chocolate comes from." Years 3 and 4 (Including Food Chains and Chocolate Packaging)"
Risk Assessments
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