Lauren Thompson Archives -Imaginations Running Wild-

Bunny Books for Preschoolers

April 8, 2022November 30, 2022 Jennifer

It’s Spring and cute bunny stuff is popping up everywhere! Preschoolers can’t resist cute little rabbits. Here is a list of my family’s favorite bunny books. Check your library for these and other stories with bunnies, rabbits, and hares.

Twelve Great Bunny Books

1. Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells —

My son loves Rosemary Wells’ stories! The Easter Bunny brought him this book one year and he immediately wanted us to sit down together and read it 🙂 In this story its Max vs. his sister, Ruby. Both bunnies want to make a cake for Grandma. Max wants to make a gross worm cake and Ruby wants to make an angel food cake. Max makes his cake but it’s missing something—red hot squirters. When Ruby sends Max to grocery store, Max tries to add the red hot squirters to the list, but he can’t write yet. Max inadvertently keeps spilling Ruby’s ingredients, resulting in more trips to the store. Finally Max draw a picture of the red hot squirters and the grocer gives him some. Soon both cakes are ready. Grandma is so excited—She doesn’t know which to eat first!

2. It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny by Marilyn Sadler —

In this funny book, P.J. Funnybunny doesn’t want to be a rabbit anymore. He lists all of the bunny things that he is sick of, and thinks that life would be better if he was a different animal. First he tries being a bear, but that wasn’t exciting enough. P.J. then tries living with birds, beavers, pigs, moose, possums, and skunks, but nothing is quite right. Finally P.J. Decides that he wants to be a bunny and he hurries back home to his family.

3. The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown —

A mommy rabbit gently reassures her little bunny that no matter what may come or where the little one may go, mommy will always be there. The little bunny comes up with all sorts of fanciful scenarios that would take it away from mommy. Mommy, however, always has the perfect reply. A beautiful story about the strength of a mother’s love.

4. Bunny’s Book Club by Annie Silvestro —

Bunny loves attending the library’s outside Storytime. But when it gets cold and Storytime moves inside, Bunny is left out. Bunny comes up with a plan to sneak into the library at night and take books home to read. Soon Bunny’s friends want books too. When the animals sneak into the library, there’re caught by a librarian. The librarian gives the animals their own library cards! Now they all get to check out books and discuss their stories at Bunny’s book club 😀.

5. Wee Little Bunny by Lauren Thompson —

It’s springtime and little bunny is too excited to sit still. There is so much to see and do! Bunny is super busy chasing dragonflies, making new friends, and checking out the world around it. When mama bunny calls, baby bunny races home to tell mama about its fun adventure. This book is not very long and has fantastic illustrations, making it a great choice for wiggly preschoolers.

6. A Boy and His Bunny by Sean Bryan —

This is a silly rhyming story about a boy and bunny who appears on his head one day. At first it seems like having a bunny on your head might be a problem, but both boy and bunny quickly show that you can do anything with a bunny on your head. Get ready to giggle as the boy races down a hill on a sled, eats, and drives a moped with a bunny on his head!

7. Guess How Much I love You? by Sam McBratney–

This story is a children’s classic! Little Nutbrown Hare and the Big Nutbrown Hare take turns saying how much they love each other. Preschoolers will enjoy the hares’ analogies of the size of their love–as high as they can jump, to the tips of their toes, and to the moon and back! This is a lovely and reassuring bedtime story to read with your little love.

8. The Rabbit, the Dark, and the Cookie Tin by Nicola O’Byrne–

It’s nighttime, but Rabbit doesn’t want to go to bed (preschoolers can relate!). Rabbit thinks that if it doesn’t get dark, then he won’t have to go to bed. Rabbit hatches a plan to catch the dark in a cookie tin and not let it out so that rabbit can stay up. In this story, preschoolers learn the importance of nighttime, and eventually rabbit agrees to let the dark out of the cookie tin. The reader gets to lift the flap and open up the cookie tin, releasing the dark in an awesome pop-up!

9. Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming —

Mr. McGreely has dreamed of planting a vegatable garden. Finally, this is year that is going to do it. Three little bunnies are excited about the new vegetables he’s growing and they sneak in to eat the yummy food each night. Mr. McGreely builds fences, walls, a moat, and finally a fortress around his vegetable garden to keep the bunnies out. It looks like the bunnies are finally locked out of the garden. Mr. McGreely does a happy dance and carries his basket into the fortress, across the moat and over the wall to pick his vegetables. But who is that hiding in the basket? It’s the bunnies! Muncha, muncha, Muncha!

10. The Tale of Peter Rabbit Story Board Book by Beatrix Potter —

No bunny books list is complete without Peter Rabbit! In this board book edition of the original Peter Rabbit story, preschoolers can get to know this naughty bunny who sneaks into Mr. McGregor’s garden. This version is shorter than the original, but still has Beatrix Potter’s charming illustrations.

11. Curious George and the Bunny —

George is a very curious monkey and always seems to get into trouble. One day, George finds a family of bunnies in a hutch. The bunnies look so soft and fluffy. George really wants to hold one, so he opens the door and takes out a baby bunny. Uh-oh, the bunny hops away and now George can’t find it! George didn’t mean to lose the bunny and he feels bad. He looks everywhere, but the bunny is still missing. Mommy bunny comes to rescue and finds her hidden baby! Yay! George puts the bunny family safety back in their hutch.

12. Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.

This book has just the right about of humor and spookiness that preschoolers love! Jasper Rabbit loves carrots and eats them all of the time. All is well until the carrots start to follow him. . . (cue creepy music). My son loves this book and it’s sequel, Creepy Underwear. It was not scary for him at age 3, and he thought it was really funny.

Check your library for these and other bunny books. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program. If you buy a book through one of my links, then I get a small percentage of the sale (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy Reading 🙂

More Bunny Fun!

Bunny Maze: help the bunny get through the maze to the yummy carrot!

Easter Bunny Letter Tracing: trace all of the letters in the words EASTER BUNNY and then color the pictures.

Adorable Bunny Paper Plate Craft: make this super cute bunny craft with a few supplies and the free template!

Animals, STEM

Learning Letter D

August 9, 2021August 23, 2021 Jennifer

Letter D is awesome — Dinosaurs, Dogs, Donuts, and Ducks! This was a fun week for my preschooler. We read books about his favorite animals, ate donuts, danced along to We are the Dinosaurs, and made a neat Froot Loops Tower.

Monday — D is for Dinosaur

Writing Practice: write uppercase D. For this letter, we used a worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:

uppercase-letter-D Download

Book: Crunch the Shy Dinosaur by Cirocco Dunlap. This is a fun, interactive book that really engages with the reader. Young children will have a blast getting to know Crunch by saying hello, singing Happy Birthday, and introducing themselves. It also encourages the reader to take into consideration that other people (and dinosaurs) might be shy when you first meet them and to let them have some quiet space to adjust to new people.

Check your library for Crunch, the Shy Dinosaur, or buy it on Amazon.

Craft / Activity: Dinosaur Coloring Page — use your creativity and color or paint an awesome dino picture! Then, Find 5 Differences between these 2 dinosaur scenes:

Dinosaur-Coloring-Page Download

Find-the-Differences-Dinosaurs-1 Download

Song: This was great excuse to sing along to our of my favorite preschool songs, We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band. Watch the music video on YouTube and march along!

Tuesday —

STEM: Build a Froot Loops Tower. This project is great for working on fine-motor skills!

Supplies needed are Play-Doh, a dry spaghetti noodle, and Froot Loops cereal.

First, make a mound out of Play-Doh to use as your tower’s base.

Second, stick a spaghetti noodle into the center of the base and make sure to really smush the Play-Doh around the bottom of the noodle so that it stands up.

Now it is time to make the tower and work on fine motor skills! Take your Froot Loops and carefully drop each down the noodle, making a tower as they stack. Have fun making color patterns. Bonus, you get to eat the cereal after your are done making towers 😉

Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.

“Dog I Spy” Worksheet: practice counting with this cute dog-themed I Spy picture.

Dog-I-Spy Download

Wednesday — D is for Dog and Donut

Writing practice: write lowercase letter d.

I found this worksheet online from PreschoolMom.com: https://preschoolmom.com/wp-content/uploads/PMom/AlphabeWorksheets/D2.pdf

Books — We read dog stories! My son loves Karma Wilson’s book, A Dog Named Doug. Doug the dog is a digging machine. He digs a holes to everywhere and gets into a bit of trouble along the way. The book ends happily with Doug digging a hole into his family’s bedroom for a bedtime cuddle. My son loves this book and he laughs every single time we read it. We have checked this out from our library numerous times, and we hope you will check it from yours too! It is also available on Amazon if you want to buy it.

We also read Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Dog a Donut. Turns out if you give a dog a donut, a great story ensues! This cute story is a fun read-aloud and good introduction to sequencing. Find a copy at your library, or buy on Amazon.

Craft — Paper Plate Donut. Supplies needed are paper plate, light brown watercolor paint and paintbrush, construction paper (we used pink), scissors, white glue, and sprinkles.

1. First my son painted the entire plate light brown.

2. While it was drying, we picked our construction paper for the donut icing. We went with the classic pink for our donut, but also strongly considered brown for a chocolate icing. I cut out a wavy shape in the pink paper.

3. After the donut plate was dry, I cut out the center to give it the donut shape.

4. My son used white, school glue to attach the icing to the plate.

5. Last, he glued on sprinkles to complete his paper plate donut 🙂

Songs — For letter D, we sang the “Donut Song.” If you don’t know this song, you can check it out on YouTube. My son loves this song and he sings it all of the time!

Thursday —

Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with a layer of table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Make bother uppercase D and lowercase d.

Worksheet: Draw a line from the lowercase d to all of the uppercase D letters.

letter-d-worksheet-1 Download

Friday — D is for Duck

Writing Practice: write uppercase D and lowercase d. We used this worksheet from K5 Learning: https://www.k5learning.com/worksheets/kindergarten/tracing-letters-d.pdf

Book: Little Quack’s New Friend by Lauren Thompson. The whole Little Quack series is adorable, but I am partial to this one because I love the new froggy friend. This Little Quack story embodies preschooler’s shyness about meeting new people, but children’s innate playfulness and curiosity wins over and everyone has fun playing together. Plus, this story is full of fun sound words to say!

There are many cute stories in the Little Quack series. Hopefully your library has this one and others. It is available for purchase on Amazon.

Craft: Color and Feathers Duck Craft — supplies needed are duck coloring sheet, crayons, white school feathers, and glue.

Here’s the coloring page we used. I found on getcoloringpages.com. Feel free to draw your own duck or cut out a duck shape from construction paper if you don’t like this one.

Duck-Coloring-Page Download

We used crayons to color our duck. My son worked hard to color within the lines!

Then we picked out feathers for our duck and attached them with white, school glue.

Song: Raffi’s Five Little Ducks. I really enjoy doing hand movements to this song. We hold up fingers on one hand for the five little ducks, folding down fingers as the ducks go over the hill. The other is our mama duck and we keep our fingers together and move them up and down to touch the thumb to make a mouth movement for the quacking parts. If you don’t know this song, it’s available on YouTube.