One of the most interesting things we learned about the rainforest is that is where chocolate grows! It’s also been our tastiest lesson from Explore the Rainforest from Experience Curriculum. Chocolate grows in the rainforest but it doesn’t look like chocolate that we’re familiar with. We learned that chocolate beans grow in pods.

Counting Cocoa Beans
Chocolate is made from cocoa trees that grow in the shade of taller trees. Cocoa trees grow cocoa pods that have beans inside them. The cocoa beans are dried and made into delicious treats.
Experience Early Learning Preschool Curriculum

The cards feature numbers on one side and divided spaces on the other side for counting the beans so the cards work well for children who are identifying numbers as well as those who are counting.
From Bean to Bar Booklet
We made a little book about chocolate – From Bean to Bar. It involved putting the pages in order with the cover on top.

Then the children cut apart the three images to glue inside the booklet.

I read the pages and they determined which picture came first, second and third.


Tasting Chocolate
Tasting chocolate was the best part! I pulled together a sample of chocolate we already had in the house. Our son went to the Galapagos Islands a couple of summers ago and brought home a large selection of flavored chocolate, so we tasted some.
Types of chocolate on our plate:
- Mini milk chocolate chips
- Pacari Dark Chocolate
- White chocolate chips
- Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
- Pacari Ecuadorian Organic Chocolate bars

The cocoa looked promising, but after they tried it, they decided it wasn’t their favorite.

Cocoa Bean Sensory Play
We didn’t really have cocoa beans, of course, so we played with rice and black beans. Since we haven’t had a sensory play bin for a while, this was a big hit! It was fun to pretend the beans were chocolate and fill the scale buckets so they equaled out.

Check out the Themeschoolers awesome chocolate activities.
More Rainforest Activities
I’ll be adding more Explore the Rainforest activities soon!
- Rainforest Collages
- What’s in the Box? Explore the Rainforest
- Amazon Orchids
- Growing Mold
- Roots
- J is for Jaguar

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest
I received curriculum from Experience Early Learning for honest and authentic stories resulting from my daily experiences using the curriculum. As a user of Experience Preschool for many years, I am pleased to share quality educational experiences. #sponsored #ExperienceEarlyLearning
Vanessa Chiarello
Thursday 10th of February 2022
Where can I get the activity resources for this? thank yoU!
Stacy
Thursday 10th of February 2022
@Vanessa Chiarello, they are only available through Experience Curriculum subscriptions at https://www.mothergoosetime.com/