How to Create an Amazing Milton Hershey Unit Study

Create a Milton Hershey unit study to learn more about Hershey’s life, chocolate company, and how chocolate is made. Your kids will eat it up!

Would you love to create a fun unit study that your kids will be fascinated to learn more about each day? Then you’ll definitely want to teach them about Milton Hershey, the man behind the Hershey candy bar.

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How to Create a Milton Hershey Unit Study Your Kids Will Love

We recently needed a break from our regular homeschool lessons, so I decided to do a fun little unit study for a week. We have many books from the “Who Was…” series, so I chose one on Milton Hershey to learn more about the man that created the Hershey bar.

This lesson is perfect anytime of year. However, if you’d like to tie it into learning more about chocolate, it would fit in very well around Valentine’s Day, Easter, and summertime (s’mores, anyone?). Halloween, September (his birthday month), and Christmas are also great times to learn about the man behind the chocolate.

Learning about Milton Hershey

For this study, we used the book, Who Was Milton Hershey. Below I’ve listed some additional books about him that would also work. We have quite a few of the books in this series. They are perfect for children to read themselves from around second grade and up, or as a read aloud for any age. If you have multiple ages of children, an older child could read it to younger children.

I keep our lessons very simple and brief. We did this study in one week for about 20-30 minutes a day. My unit studies are additional fun activities outside of our usual curriculum, so I don’t worry about which subjects I am fitting into them. In this study, we included geography, history, science, art, and language arts/reading comprehension.

Fun Learning Activities and Resources to Include in Your Milton Hershey Unit Study

For our week long study, I read 2-3 chapters each day and then we completed 1-2 of the following activities afterward. We added this unit study to our morning basket time.

1. Compare and Contrast Candy Stores.

After reading chapter 1, you can discuss how people bought candy in 1900 and compare it to buying candy today. Using a Venn diagram is a great way to display these similarities and differences.

2. Map Hershey’s Life.

Much of Hershey’s life occurred in Pennsylvania. However, he did travel to and live in a few other places. Find these states or countries on a map.

3. Include a Study of Chocolate.

What study about Milton Hershey would be complete without a study of chocolate as well?! For a quick study, watch the video below to see where chocolate comes from and how it is made. For a longer study, read books about chocolate and create activities. We enjoyed a Hershey bar as we watched the video. Yum!

4. Create Your Own Town.

Milton Hershey created an entire town for the employees of his chocolate company. Have your kids come up with a business of their own, and then have them create their own town for it. They can name their town and all of the streets and buildings. After drawing this on paper, they can use Legos or other building toys to create a 3D version, if they’d like.

5. Design Your Own Candy.

A final activity for a Hershey study is to create your own candy! Hershey was persistent in life, always working on creating new things. Have your child design their own candy. They can illustrate the wrapper, and then write a paragraph or two about how the candy is made and why they created the candy and the packaging like they did.

Have them think deeper than just what it looks like. Ask them to think about whether one person will create the candy from start to finish, or if they would use an assembly line. Have them think about what to put into their candy, and why they would package it a certain way. They could finish with an advertisement for the candy, either in print or video form.

If your child is older, they can figure out a rough cost of creating this candy. They could research where they’d need to go to purchase materials and supplies. Ask them where they would put their factory for the best cost benefit. For example, Hershey realized his location meant that he was near dairy farms for needed milk, and near railroads to receive needed materials and ship finished product to cities.

Additional Ideas for Your Milton Hershey Unit Study

Additional Books to Read

• Milton Hershey: Young Chocolatier (Childhood of Famous Americans)
• Chocolate by Hershey: A Story about Milton S. Hershey (Creative Minds Biographies) 
• Milton Hershey: More Than Chocolate (Heroes of History)
• Smart About Chocolate: A Sweet History (Smart About History) 
• Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest

Additional Learning Activities

• Study the cacao bean and how it is harvested.
• Learn about the rainforest, where the cacao bean is found.
• Study the Civil War (Hershey lived near Gettyburg during the battle).
• Learn how newspapers are printed (one of Hershey’s first jobs).
• Read about the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where Hershey saw how chocolate is made and bought machinery for his factory.
• Learn about the Great Depression.
• Study the assembly line and/or Henry Ford.
• Learn about the Titanic, on which Hershey and his wife were supposed to ride back to America before plans changed.
• Study rations during World War I and II.

Do you enjoy using the Who Was…. series in your homeschool? Then you’ll want to check out these printable guides to use with the books.

You and your children will have so much fun learning about Milton Hershey in a fun unit study! Encourage creativity in your children with fun learning activities, such as creating their own town and candy. Include subjects like geography, science, history, and art in these activities. Your child will never look at a Hershey bar in the same way after they learn about Milton Hershey’s journey to create it.