Do you have a student who loves bunnies? Are you planning a bunny or rabbit unit? Scroll below for many rabbit-themed ideas. A variety of these activities are suitable for preschool, kindergarten, homeschool, and special education. These bunny activities blend the theme of rabbits with number recognition, addition, subtraction, and alphabet letter recognition. Center ideas include outdoor learning, math center, reading center, dramatic play center, block center, and art center. Set up your classroom for fun with little bunnies. (Close supervision is required for all activities and play, to be sure the children are safe and are using the materials appropriately.)
Ideas to Incorporate Into Your Bunny-Themed Circle Time or Morning Meeting:
•Do you have a pet bunny? If not one of your students might! Try to find a bunny visitor for your morning meeting. Discuss the bunny. What color is its fur? Why does it have long ears? Does it have a tail? Close the doors to the classroom and have all the children sit down with instructions not to grab the bunny. Have the bunny hop around the room. Discuss how it hops. How are its back legs used differently than its front legs? Place the bunny back on your lap or in its cage. Depending on the temperament of the bunny you can invite the children to take turns petting the rabbit.
• Use this fun poem we have written to introduce the morning. Feel free to add hand movements:
Floppy ears furry feet
Hopping on the ground
Little fuzzy cotton tail
Bouncing all around
• Consider using bunny-themed calendar pieces or classroom decor to form patterns and discuss the day of the month.
• Read a story about bunnies. Ask some volunteers to act the story out as you read.
•Don’t forget to discuss the fun invitations you have available in the class for today! Read below for some inspiring bunny activities for your daily stations!
Rabbit Activities in the Outdoor Classroom:
•Bunny Observation: if you have a school bunny, milk crates, and an enclosed grass area, this is a great activity. Place a set of milk crates in a square or circle (on the grass) so that the edges touch and create a barrier. Invite the children to sit on the crates. Place the bunny inside the circle. As the bunny hops around and eats grass, ask and invite questions about the bunny. For a successful observation consider including these rules: all the children in the viewing area need to remain seated on the milk crates, milk crates need to stay where they are, the bunny must remain on the ground, and gentle petting only- no restricting the bunny by grabbing it or picking it up.
•Bunny long jump: In a grassy area lay a jump rope or string as a “starting line”. Invite the children to jump as far as they can from behind the line. Where they first touch the ground is their landing spot. They can mark their landing spot with a colored bean bag. Measuring and charting the distances can also bring some math skills to this activity.
•Bunny burrow: ask parents to donate cardboard boxes (large enough for a child to crawl through) and duct tape. Invite the children to tape the boxes together to make a bunny burrow and maze. When they are finished they can crawl in and out of the burrow.
•Bunny sensory tub: fill a sensory tub with hay or grass clippings. Place some small plastic bunny toys in the tub along with some cups or containers. Demonstrate how a child can cover a container with grass or hay to make a “burrow”.
Bunny Activities for Digital Distance Learning, or a Computer Center:
The following virtual activities are great for students who love digital learning. These are available for use on Google Slides™ or you can select the Boom Cards™ format. In the math activities, the students will count the draggable pieces and place them in the field as a virtual manipulative to help them solve the problem. In the alphabet activity, they will use draggable pieces to trace the letters. These digital activities are made for the following learning objectives: number recognition, counting, addition, subtraction, and virtual letter tracing. Choose the one that best suits the skills that your students need, or you can save more by purchasing them as a bundle!
Bunny Ideas for the Reading and Writing Center:
• Decorate your reading corner in a nature theme. Hang large leafy branches from the ceiling and consider bringing in wood rounds for the children to sit on (inspect the wood for insects before bringing them into the classroom). Add some green blankets or pillows and soft stuffed bunny toys. Decorating the reading center in a new style will often catch the child’s attention. It sparks their interest to explore and pick up a book to read.
• Add books on bunnies and rabbits! (Stating the obvious).
• Match the bunny with the burrow. Write some capital letters of the alphabet on disposable cups “burrows” then, print and cut out pictures of bunnies with the lowercase version of the same letters. Invite the children to sort the bunnies into the correct burrows.
Rabbit Ideas for the Math Center:
• Make a chart or graph displaying the distance the children can jump (see outdoor classroom activities above).
•Hop and graph: Invite the children to hop (or jump) 10 or 20 times. Each time they complete a set, they can fill in (or place a sticker in) the graph. You can format the graph to show who hops the most, and/or how much the class hops collectively.
• Stock a station with small plastic bunny toys, and white adult socks. On the toe of each sock, write a number. Invite the children to place the corresponding number of bunnies into the “burrows”(socks).
Bunnies in the Dramatic Play Center:
• Invite the children to utilize the bunny ears they made in the art center (mentioned below) to pretend they are bunnies!
• Invite children to utilize the burrow described in the outdoor classroom section(above) as a setting for their bunny dramatic play.
•Demonstrate how to form a bunny shape with the hand. Invite children to use your puppet theatre to put on a bunny play. They can also use a flashlight to make a bunny shadow play.
•Vet Center: Line up your dramatic play area with supplies for a veterinary center. Include stethoscopes, thermometers, ace bandages, disposable bandages, and syringes. Include clipboards and pens for some inviting writing practice as well.
Bunnies in the Block Center:
• In an open area (such as the outdoors) invite the children to test how many blocks they can “hop” over. A stack of three? Five? Eight?
• Invite the children to create a burrow with the blocks. They can use small bunny toys to test if the burrow can stand strong through various “natural disasters”.
Bunny Invitations for the Art Center:
• Bunny-ear hat: Place colored construction paper, scissors, and glue at a table. Demonstrate how the children can cut out bunny-shaped ears, and then glue them onto a strip of paper (to be worn crown-style). Students may need help measuring their heads and then stapling the ends together.
•Cottontail painting: pinch large pieces of cotton in clothespins. Stock the table with paint, paper, and these “cottontail” dabbers. Invite the children to use the dabbers to dab paint on their artwork.
•Grass clipping and flower press: Bunnies eat grass, and sometimes flowers. Stock your table with white tissue paper, white construction paper, rolling pins, nontoxic flower petals, and some fresh grass clippings. Invite the children to “sandwich” a few blades of grass and petals between the tissue and the construction paper and then roll with a rolling pin. Lay flat to dry. (be cautious, some children are allergic to grass)
Fine and Gross Motor Rabbit activities:
•Hop like a bunny, hop like a human: Invite the children to hop on all fours like a bunny. Then ask them to show you how a human hops on one foot. Who can hop the most amount of times? Who can hop the farthest?
•Bunny dough play: place out an assortment of dough tools, dough, and cookie cutters in the shapes of bunnies. Invite the children to squish, press, and form the dough into bunnies.
• Watercolor bunnies: stock a table with droppers, watercolor, watercolor paper (or bunny printouts), and carbon paper to trace (optional). Demonstrate how the children can use the carbon paper to transfer (trace) the image onto the watercolor paper. Then invite them to use the dropper to drip the watercolor onto the painting.
Conclusion: These activities are great for a bunny theme. Rabbit enthusiasts will engage in various learning centers including a math center, reading center, dramatic play center, art center, block center, and digital learning computer center. Skills include pre-reading skills, math skills, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, addition, subtraction, number recognition, and counting – to name a few. Watch learning come to life in your classroom as your students engage in these fantastic rabbit activities. We hope you enjoyed this free lesson plan and center ideas.
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