For the month of May we will be hopping down the bunny trail by reading Peter Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny, other Beatrix Potter books and other books about rabbits, as well as learning a little bit more about the life of Beatrix Potter and where she was from – England, as well a an all-encompassing garden theme! Oh the fun! I can hardly wait!
Helpful Links
*Elizabeth Foss has a few lovely posts from which I’ve gleaned lots of wonderful ideas. Here she goes into detail about a Beatrix Potter rabbit trail. And we’ll borrow some more of her ideas on our lovely walk down the garden path. And here is another lovely collection of ideas for a Beatrix Potter unit study.
*Homeschool Share has a Peter Rabbit lapbook (click on lapbook templates for a complete lapbook)
*By George, HSS also has a multi-book unit on Beatrix Potter! This will be wonderful to do parts of this for our author study!
*HSS has an animal study and lapbook on rabbits that we’ll be spending a few days on as well!
*Of course you must check out the official Peter Rabbit website if you are going to be doing a unit study on Peter Rabbit! There are lots of coloring pages found here, in the same original art by Beatrix Potter, as well as some craft ideas.
Ideas and Activities
*Have an English tea! As we are learning about England, I think this would be the perfect time to learn a few customs and have an English tea! We had a Beatrix Potter tea with this unit and it was so fun!!
*grow something with the kids – I love this idea featured on Crafty Crow, because you can see what is happening under the dirt! I think we’ll try this!
*Watch Miss Potter, the movie, together
*A friend showed me this website where I have now printed off all our copywork (in cursive!) for the next weeks!! I used quotes directly from the original Peter Rabbit story.
*You can’t learn about Beatrix Potter without spending some time with watercolors! I hope to give the kids several different opportunities to experiment with watercolors, especially mixing white with our colors to get the lighter, pastel colors that Miss Potter used so often!
Books We’ll Be Reading
I just got my books from the library for this unit and am SUPER excited, there are lots of great books I’ve not seen before! We “rowed” Peter Rabbit I think nearly 3 years ago…but this time, going more in depth on an author study of Beatrix Potter, as well as having my “baby” able to participate more while we read this classic, all of these things have me super excited to start this unit!
Beatrix Potter The Complete Tales
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter’s Art
Country Artist: A Story About Beatrix Potter (Creative Minds Biography)
Beatrix
My Dear Noel
And don’t forget about the movie, I loved it!!
Thank you for the link to the wheatberries project! I think we’ll start that one tomorrow. 🙂 I have the berries and it will be fun and easy to do.
I’m doing Little Rabbit with my 4yo and have been searching for some fun hands-on things to do.
Thanks again!
Leslie
What a wonderful May you have planned! I watched Miss Potter with my boys a few months back and it really breathed life into our nature journals, as well as opened up into some fascinating conversations.
Please do let us know any more hidden gems you uncover while hopping down the rabbit trail.