Peter Rabbit "Cottontail" Transfer Tray

Yesterday I posted about the newest tray I setup for my oldest to work on, learning number words by sight using "cottontails".  Today I'm going to share with you the one my daughter is using as a transfer activity moving cottontails from one bowl to another.

I already mentioned how our first dry pour activity started off a success, but quickly went downhill.  I'm still finding dry beans around the kitchen and living room.  It will probably be a while before I give beans another chance around here, but their replacement - pom poms - seems to working out better.

We had been using a variety of mini pom poms to do a color sorting activity, but for this particular tray I just pulled out all the white ones to use as white rabbit tails, or "cottontails".  My two year old will use the tiny spoon to move each cottontail one at a time to the other bowl.

It's still pretty tricky for her, and she won't always just move one pom pom or sometimes it won't make it in the bowl, but she keeps at it.  Although she is really good about turning the tray around when she's ready to start again!

And when they decide they're done with the trays, there's always these fun Peter Rabbit coloring pages.  The Peter Rabbit coloring book we have goes through the whole story, so we talked about what was happening in the story from the pages they chose.

It's just so cute to watch the little ones color!

Peter Rabbit "Counting Cottontails" Tray

We are having a lot of fun with our Peter Rabbit theme this week.  If you missed it earlier, here's a link to my post about our Peter Rabbit themed sensory tub.  I'm so happy the kids enjoy this story as much as I do! (Well maybe not as much as I do, but that's only because I REALLY love this book!)  I also decided it was time to change up our trays this week, so here's a look at the first of our Peter Rabbit themed trays.  

We have been working a bit on sight words with my four year old, so I decided to make a tray to help him with recognizing the number words by sight.  I made these self-checking cards by writing the word for each number on one side of a blank index card and writing the corresponding digit on the back.  I used zero through ten.

I use a piece of black construction paper folded in half for a work mat.  And there's a cup holding all of the cottontails (simply cotton balls!) He selects a card and counts out the correct number of cottontails.  

And if he gets stumped or to check his work he simply flips the card over to see the number.

He seemed to really enjoy this activity, and I think he'll know these number words by sight in no time.  He's really good at two (his sister's age), four (since it's his age), and zero!  He loves doing zero and showing you that there are no cottontails!

Peter Rabbit Sensory Tub

I am beyond excited about our newest sensory tub.  My husband gave me the idea for this one, and I couldn't wait to get started on it!  If you know me at all you know I'm a fan of anything that has to do with rabbits.  I've loved Peter Rabbit since I was little, and I'm doing my best to make sure my kids love him too! My son was Peter Rabbit for his first Halloween, and he also had a Peter Rabbit themed first birthday party!  That was a while ago, but now that we are getting into these sensory tubs, it only made sense to make a Peter Rabbit themed tub too!

I've seen a lot of gardening themed sensory tubs that include elements of the Peter Rabbit story, or where people have used the story to go along with spring time and gardening themes tub.  I'm not going to use this tub to introduce gardening although we will talk about ways to use all the objects in the tub including the gardening tools.  I just wanted all the objects in the tub to represent something from the story.

However instead of gardening, while we are learning the story of Peter Rabbit, we will be focusing on the topics of fruits and vegetables, eating healthy, and what happens when you get sick (and how to get better).  Both of my kids have colds this week, so it's ironically perfect timing for that little lesson.

The filler for this tub is from a bag of Spanish moss.  It has a wonderful texture and very Earthy smell so it does a great job of representing the dirt of the garden and forest in the story!

Here are some close up shots of what's included in our sensory tub.  The gardening tools represent the tool shed that Peter ran in to hide and also Mr. McGregor working in his garden.  The small flower represents the flower pots that Peter knocked over.  There are three "brass" buttons for the buttons on Peter's jacket.  These small buttons are deceptively heavy so that's a nice surprise when you pick one up!  The net that Peter's buttons got tangled up in is represented by the small square of brown shelf liner.  (I considered using medical gauze or cheesecloth for the net, but both of those were white and I would have wanted to dye them brown.  Since this shelf liner was already brown, it was an easy pick!)  The berries are for the blackberries that Peter's siblings went to gather.  The cup and the spoon are for the teaspoon of tea that Mrs. Rabbit gave to Peter when he was sick.

The "food" pieces are from my kids' kitchen set.  There is a slice of pie because Peter's father was put into one of Mrs. McGregor's pies.  I've also included a carrot (just because everyone knows rabbits like carrots!), peas because the mouse in the story was carrying peas in her mouth, an onion because Mr. McGregor was hoeing onions, and lettuce because that's one of the vegetables that Peter stopped to eat.  The loaf of bread is for Mrs. Rabbit buying bread at the baker's.  

There's a small shoe by the fence that represents Peter losing his shoes in the garden, and of course the fence because Peter had to crawl under the fence to get in and out of Mr. McGregor's garden.  

The most difficult piece to find for this tub was a watering can.  This time of year, watering cans are few an far between, especially the miniature one I was looking to include here.  Waiting till springtime would have been easier, but I was too excited about this tub to wait!  So I improvised.  I used a small plastic measuring cup from the kid's kitchen set and wrapped it in duct tape to make it silver like metal.  Voila, instant watering can!  Inside it is a small toy rabbit.  

I also pulled out our collection of Peter Rabbit books to go with the sensory tub.  We have two copies of the  original story.  (One my mom gave to me in 1994!)  The "Peter Rabbit Says" book is a cute little story using several Beatrix Potter characters that play a memory game while waiting in line at the general store.  There's a Peter Rabbit board book, a coloring book, and a large Beatrix Potter journal that is more like a scrapbook of everything Beatrix Potter.  There are lots of little snipits and pictures about Peter Rabbit throughout the journal.  

And the last little book is "Pierre Lapin", Peter Rabbit in French!  I was so excited to find this book!  We'll spend our French lessons working on words from this book, and then try to identify the objects in the sensory tub using French.

Check out the sensory tubs link at the top of the page to see the other sensory tubs we've made!