This is a lovely story involving the first time that a rabbit leaves her burrow, goes on an adventure and meets new creatures along the way. The story rhymes which is always fun and the pictures are detailed and colourful. As it is the first time that the rabbit meets these creatures they explain a little bit about themselves so you learn some facts as you read the story. It became a firm favourite in our house very quickly.
Activities
A new adventure
Think of a curious plan
Share your adventure
Forest sensory activity
Night time animal spot
Carrot cake
Carrot different ways
Iced biscuits
Lolly pop story characters
Night time pictures
Soft and fluffy rabbit picture
Rabbit dress up
Outdoor
As the story is set out of the burrow it makes sense to start with the outdoor activities first. A good one to start with could be to take your child/children on an adventure to somewhere they haven't been before. Older children could think up their own curious plan for the outing and you could discuss all the new things that they encounter. If your child/children is old enough they could tell someone else of their travels. Another activity could be to get a large tray, bowl or other container and fill it with things from the forest like twigs, leaves, acorns, conkers (you could have a walk first to collect the things) and then let your child explore them. You could introduce texture words and if you have a small animal toys then you could add them to the container and let their imagination run wild. Keep an eye on little ones though as you won't want them putting the things in their mouth. A final outdoor activity could be to go for a walk when it is dark and see if your child/children can see any nocturnal animals.
Food/Cooking
There isn't really any food mentioned in the book (apart from the owl collecting food for it's young) but as it is about a rabbit you could make a carrot cake with your child/children. Encourage them to add ingredients and mix and my son is very good at doing the greasing so things don't stick. You could also decorate it if you wanted. You could introduce carrot different ways (if you haven't before and even if you have it could still be fun). You could do cooked and raw carrot at the same time. Your child/children could taste it and then you could talk about the similarities and differences and if you wanted you could go all the way and do mashed carrot or roasted carrot for them to try too. Older children could help you with the peeling and chopping and younger children can help put them in the pan. For something a bit sweeter you could make some plain biscuits (or buy some, there is no judging here) and get your child/children to ice them. They could make them look like the animals that they have seen in the story. You could also give them different things to add on to help with their creations like chocolate fingers, raisins, chocolate drops etc.
Indoor
For younger children you could make the different animals out of card and stick them on lolly pop sticks and then your child/children could choose the correct animal for the correct page. You could get them to help you create them. The story mostly takes place at night so you could do a night time picture using black or dark blue paper and coloured chalk. If you don't have chalk available you could use paint. They could choose to draw a scene from the book, one of the animals or they could just draw what they want to. Rabbits are soft and fluffy so you could do a picture of a rabbit with your child and then they can stick cotton wool on to make their picture soft and fluffy. A final activity to go a long with this story is to dress up as a rabbit and go on an imaginative adventure. You could create some ears using card. Cut a strip and make a headband by joining the two ends together (if you decide to staple it don't forget use the stapler the opposite way so the flat staple goes against the child's head, not the bumpy bit) and then make some ears to stick on. You could make these fluffy with cotton wool if you wanted. Then make a tail, you could do this a few ways but making a card one with cotton wool is probably the easiest. You could attach the tail on to a belt or you could pin the tail on to the child's clothes using a safety pin or you could attach the tail on to some string or wool and tie it round your child's waist.
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