Course Sample for Our Everyday Explorers: Australia and New Zealand Homeschool Geography Course

Explore the history of a different state of Australia or area of New Zealand one unit at a time. This section covered two days of our adventure in Tasmania.

The Cadbury Chocolate Factory, Day One

We have one more place I really want to show you in Tasmania. It’s quite possibly the tastiest stop of all—the Cadbury chocolate factory! We won’t be allowed into the areas where they actually make the chocolates, but we can spend some time in the visitor’s centre, taste-test a few things, and learn a bit about chocolate. Do you want to go?

Chocolate has had many different uses throughout history. It was a special drink for the Mayan Indians (who even used it as a type of money). Of course, we all know it as a favorite dessert of people all over the world.

Cocoa trees grow in the tropical regions of the world. The trees grow cocoa pods that are harvested twice a year. Each tree will produce twenty or thirty pods each year, and it takes everything one tree can grow in a year to yield just 450 mgs of chocolate!

Before those cocoa beans become tasty chocolate, they have to be harvested, fermented, dried, bagged, winnowed, roasted, and grinded—all before the beans can be pressed to make cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is just one of the key ingredients in the chocolates we enjoy today.

Here is a website that will get you started exploring.

The notebooking pages in your Explorer Pack (found below lesson two) will guide you through the next two days of our expedition!

To view a full sample of this class, click here.