The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Waterstones.com

"The Tale of Peter Rabbit" was first published by Frederick Warne in 1902 and endures as Beatrix Potter's most popular and well-loved tale. It tells the story of a very mischievous rabbit and the trouble he encounters in Mr McGregor's vegetable garden!  

This lovely book has tied in very well with all of our recent activity at the allotment. In contrast to our last FIAR work, Harry really enjoyed the sit-down elements and I had to prepare some more as he had completed everything so quickly. When I planned the work for this book, I had included some practical garden work such as planting some seeds but we have been doing so much at the allotment we didn't do any specific practical work for this. We used this Garden pre-school pack for printable elements.

We matched some garden words. Firstly, Harry matched the words to pictures with words attached, then I gave him pictures with the words removed and he matched the words up again. He was reluctant at first, saying he couldn't do it, but was really good at it when he got going. 

 

We also looked at some garden pictures and Harry circled the correct starting letter.

 

He traced some upper and lower case letters, then wrote the same letters freehand.

Harry put the parts of a flower in the correct order and matched the words up.

We sorted pictures into groups of vegetables and flowers.

He used his pen well to trace lines from watering can to flower.

We played a Peter Rabbit game, where Harry put the cabbage pictures in number order 1-20. He then hid a small picture of Peter under one and I had to guess which number. If I got it wrong, Harry said whether I needed to go higher or lower. This was popular and we spent a good half hour playing with it.

Harry coloured pictures of Peter Rabbit. He looked back in the book to see the colours of the coat, flowers, pots and shoe (obviously not for the technicolour rabbit on the left!)

 We baked some tasty rabbit shaped gingerbread cookies. Harry was very independent and I actually went off to cook tea while he got on with this. I made most of the mixture as it involved boiling sugar and syrup but after that he did all of the elements up to putting them in the oven.

We were playing with playdough one day and Harry decided to make Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, so I asked him what else from the story he could make. He made Mr McGregor, carrots, lettuce and letters for the word Peter. 

We have been singing the song included in the pre-school pack all week and I have overheard Harry singing it along to himself:

What do plants need?

What do plants need?

To grow tall

To grow tall

Plants need soil

Water, sun and air

Watch them grow

Watch them grow

As he is a lover of mud and soil, we borrowed a book all about soil from the library which we have been reading too.