The Little Rabbit {Homeschool Book Unit}

We are learning using the excellent literature curriculum Before Five in a Row. This week we have been rowing The Little Rabbit:

We did a row of the Little Rabbit last year, but the girls have been asking to do a rerow of it.  The reason for this sudden fascination in all things rabbit is that we were given two rabbits a couple of weeks ago.  The book has become alive for the girls!  The Little Rabbit by Phoebe Dunn is a delightful book telling the story of a beautiful white rabbit as he discovers his new life with a little girl. The pictures are all photographs, which make this book incredibly appealing to my little girls.

The Little Rabbit: Read Aloud Books

I just used the rest of the B4FIAR bunny books. Goodnight Moon is one of my all time favourites to read to all my children. Seriously, one never out grows this book!

The second book is called Runaway Bunny, and is a lovely tale of a mother bunny and her baby bunny. It makes me cry every time I read it.

The Little Rabbit: Dressing up and Drama

Very little is needed to keep my girls from donning accessories and becoming lost in imaginative play. It helps that their older sisters are always on hand to pretend with them. For this book we chose some simple bunny ears:

Little World Tub

The Little Rabbit is a book about a pet rabbit owned and adored by a little girl.  She takes the little rabbit everywhere with her.  One day she falls asleep and the rabbit meets a boy rabbit and a while later the little pet rabbit gives birth to 7 tiny baby rabbits.  For this tray, I used Playmobil Bunny set.

I’ve included the pet girl rabbit, the wild male rabbit and some of their children; I also put in the little girl, her daddy and some of her friends, who end up taking the baby rabbits home; there is a basket, a cage, carrots, hay and grass from the fields and finally the butterfly and tortoise that the little rabbit met whilst exploring.( In fact, on closer inspection I think I may have included a turtle instead of tortoise!).  This will be a perfect tray activity for B2, but also useful for A4 in her quiet time basket:

Role Play

We have bunnies for them to play with for real, but the little toy bunnies they had been given in their surprise Goodnight Moon slumber party last week, gave me an idea for some pretend play.  I decided I would make a cage for the little ones to play with inside using their toy bunnies.  Finding a cardboard box, I taped up the open side (making a waterproof roof) and cut out two doors.  I began the rather laborious process of cutting out squares to make a pretend wire mesh in one of the doors and then added two bead handles, tying them on with rubber bands (simply because they were all I had to hand).

I made a sign and enlisted the help of my older children.

C10 took A4 to collect some hay from outside to put in the cage, whilst L10 and B2 went through our pretend food box for lettuce, carrots, bowls and even found a baby’s bottle we could use as a rabbit’s water bottle!  We couldn’t find a carrot but thought the chilli pepper looked close enough, confident the rabbits wouldn’t notice.  They are stuffed after all!:

The girls enjoying playing with their new toy and their bunnies:

This was such an easy project and took about 20 minutes to make start to finish and best of all cost absolutely nothing!

The Little Rabbit: Activity Trays

I created lots of trays themed around The Little Rabbit. First, a colouring in puzzle. Abigail thoroughly enjoyed spending time colouring this in and then doing the puzzle with whoever would help her:

Second, was a block puzzle of a couple of bunnies. I am always on the look out for inexpensive activities, and these were a great find at a charity shop:

Abigail loves puzzles, and completed them easily:

Third, I chose an activity which both girls could do together – a cuddly rabbit to colour in – a perfect go along for The Little Rabbit!

Forth, I bought some simple Lego blocks which had a Rabbit theme running through them. Becca played with these with her Granny:

The Little Rabbit: Mummy and Abigail Activity

This is something we all do daily, but cleaning out the rabbit hutch and feeding and watering our very own rabbits is a great learning experience.  I also gave both girls lots of experience handling the rabbits:

The Little Rabbit: Snacks

All of the bunny shaped food was made with cutters like these and these

Marmite toast bunnies

Decorated Tortilla Biscuits

I did this as a tray activity for the girls, cutting out big and small rabbit shapes from tortillas (healthier than biscuits).  I put these in a tray with decorating icing pens, butterfly sprinkles and enough plates for them all:

Homemade Bunny Icecream

Bunny Shaped Banana Sandwiches

The Little Rabbit: Special Hunt the Bunny Eggs

Gary and I organised a bunny hunt in the front garden for all the children, using the bunny baskets they had from last week.  We gave them the baskets and asked them to guess what might be happening next.  It took them a while with a few hints from Gary but their reaction was well worth the wait:

The Little Rabbit: Muffin Tins

This was our first rather messy muffin tin. It might not look like much but it was probably A4’s favourite tin meal (almost due entirely to the marshmallow fluff!)

Mini carrots were perfect for ‘bunny’ to eat –  you don’t need to peel these so they look kinda cool.  I used some iced gem biscuits to represent all the flowers that crop up in the book, popping them on some shredded green paper for the grass!  I created the white mummy bunny by making some frozen banana bunny shaped lolly pops (literally mash banana then freeze) and for the brown daddy  I dipped a banana lolly in melted chocolate!

Our second muffin tin was much more sedate and healthy. Firstly I used some cress for grass, along with some egg mayonnaise. Next, I cut out two white bread bunnies and two brown bread bunnies for them to make their own egg mayo and cress sandwiches. And I popped in a few minutes carrots. Lastly, I made a little bunnies’ nest using vanilla yogurt and some chocolate bunnies:

This was such a great study! Home school rocks!

This post was first published in 2013, but has since been updated and reposted.