Gentle Teaching with the Rabbit Trails Curriculum
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The Rabbit Trails curriculum reminds me of how I taught kindergarten in my classroom and elementary grades in my homeschool. My kids are now in 7th and 10th grades, but I have such fond memories of reading a huge stack of books and using them as a launchpad for learning.
I’m a big fan of using age-appropriate literature to explore new topics. Using literature (yes, picture books absolutely count as literature) to teach has a few benefits:
- A great story can create interest and excitement about a topic
- Different types of stories can reach different personalities
- Reading or listening to a book automatically reaches visual and auditory learners
- It is easy for parents – no searching for the right words; just open the book and read
- Books can be an excellent way to understand different viewpoints
Have you ever heard the term ‘rabbit trails’?
An educational rabbit trail is when one topic leads into another. It is kind of like the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie book. We start off learning one thing, and then we notice something else, so we go explore that. That continues until all of the curiosity has been acknowledged.
One example of a homeschool rabbit trail from my own homeschool is when I first made a particular Thai soup dish for my family. My kids loved the new recipe, so we looked up more Thai recipes.
Then we were curious about the ingredients used, so we looked up agriculture in Thailand. This led to learning about the geography of Thailand. While exploring the geography, we wanted to learn more about some of the attractions (cities and beaches in particular). We were actually in the process of planning a trip to Thailand when 2020 went sideways and canceled our plans.
I’ll explain more about the Rabbit Trails curriculum, but let me start by saying that I am impressed. I love the way that the activities and book suggestions work together to dive deeper into a topic while also keeping learning fun.
I am a big believer that elementary school curricula should be fun, and the Rabbit Trails curriculum delivers! I wish that this curriculum were available when my kids were younger. It is a lot of work compiling activities and resources to follow rabbit trails, but the Rabbit Trails curriculum makes it super easy for parents.
Rabbit Trails Curriculum
The Rabbit Trails curriculum creates a plan for parents to teach language arts and science through rabbit trails inspired by great children’s literature! This elementary program does the hard work of noticing potential rabbit trails in books and matching up fantastic resources and activities.
The Rabbit Trails follows a Charlotte Mason educational philosophy. Hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason educational philosophy include:
- Uses living books instead of textbooks
- Retelling, or narrating, stories
- Overlapping subjects
- Short engaging lessons
- Copywork
- Nature study
This curriculum is available digitally, which means you can get it right away without waiting for shipping. It is hosted on the Teachable platform, which gives you the flexibility of viewing the lessons online or downloading and printing. I like that parents have the choice whether to use the curriculum digitally or to print it. I personally prefer to print out curricula, but everyone has different preferences and needs.
There is no student workbook required. Simply use whatever notebook works best for your student.
The curriculum does not have a set schedule. Instead, you are free to move lessons around within each title in a way that works for your family. If the kids are being snuggly on the couch, pull out a few extra books to read. If they are feeling creative, do one of the art projects.
I suggest reserving all of the extra books and gathering all of the craft and activity supplies at the beginning of each book. Then you are always ready for whatever sounds interesting on any particular day.
Currently, there are two types of Rabbit Trails curricula available – literature and science.
Update – There are now 6 Rabbit Trail curriculum options! Choices include language arts, science, history & geography, National parks, holidays, and writing.
Rabbit Trails Curriculum Review ~ Literature
The Rabbit Trails curriculum features high-quality children’s books for both literature and science, but the literature volumes focus on language arts topics such as grammar, genres, writing, etc.
The Rabbit Trails curriculum literature volumes are intended to be the primary language arts curriculum, but they do not teach spelling or phonics. My recommendation would be to use the All About Spelling and Reading curricula to teach those core subjects. There are plenty of writing exercises, but if you want a systematic approach to writing instruction, I would recommend WriteShop.
Rabbit Trails literature does a fantastic job of teaching grammar principles as well as general language arts skills (parts of a book, rhyming, differences between genres, etc.)
The literature volumes each cover 16 books over 32 weeks. You can of course speed up or slow down the pace, but 32 is the typical length of a school year.
The books are divided into three units. The unit structure provides a way to teach and review the language arts lessons while reading a variety of books. For example, Unit 1 lessons focus on nouns, verbs, capitalization, and periods, with a little time for review. The rabbit trails include snakes, libraries, zoos, Vikings, ecosystems, and presidents.
Each of the 16 books includes:
- Copy work
- Language Arts lesson
- Writing activity
- Craft
- Book suggestions for rabbit trails
- A page full of additional activities to support the rabbit trails
I think the Rabbit Trails language arts volumes will appeal to a lot of kids. What’s not to love about great literature, hands-on activities, and crafts?
Kids who already enjoy reading will love all of the books. Kids who don’t naturally love reading will appreciate all of the fun hands-on activities. I honestly think that following a book’s rabbit trails will help gently nudge kids who are not reading fans into kids who enjoy books.
Want to know more? Try this Rabbit Trails curriculum literature sample lesson (scroll down, and you will see 2 sample lessons).
Rabbit Trails Curriculum Review ~ Science
Currently, the Rabbit Trails curriculum science option focuses on birds (I suspect there will be more editions in the future). This is the most comprehensive bird curriculum I have ever seen!
When I first saw that the science curriculum was about birds, I assumed it was just a unit study meant for a few weeks.
Nope. This curriculum covers 16 different bird-related topics in a way that is both detailed and grade-level appropriate. If we follow the same pace as with the Rabbit Trails literature curriculum, that is a FULL YEAR of learning all about birds! How fun!
The 16 topics are:
- Intro to Birds
- Feathers and Wings
- Egg Anatomy
- Owls
- Beaks and Bills
- Migration
- Nests
- Eagles
- Penguins
- Ducks
- Peacocks and Courtship
- Hummingbirds
- Ostriches
- Endangered and Extinct Species
- Coastal Birds
- Mythical Birds
See? It is a lot of info!
This Rabbit Trail curriculum follows the general format of the literature volumes. Each section begins with a lesson about the topic. Typically, this includes reading specific pages from 4 core bird resource books for kids.
After the lesson, there are observation and nature study activities, copy work opportunities, hands-on activities, and suggested books. There are also plenty of additional educational, yet fun, ideas.
I am particularly fond of the craft activities. They are so creative! I never would have thought to have my kids paint an ostrich with a fork. I also really like the field trip suggestions.
Spending a year of elementary school learning all about birds sounds like an amazing school year!
Try out a sample lesson from the bird volume to see for yourself how fantastic it is.
How to Adapt the Rabbit Trails Curriculum for Multiple Grade Levels
I loved teaching both of my kids together when they were in elementary grades. It was a huge time saver! It also made it easy to supervise both kids while keeping them engaged. One of the unique things about homeschooling is that siblings can also be classmates.
Kindergarten – 5th grade, the traditional elementary grades, is a pretty big range. When I taught my kids together, I would either make a lesson more challenging for my daughter (oldest) or easier for my son (youngest).
To make it more challenging:
- Ask more comprehension questions.
- Require longer pieces of copywork.
- Require longer, more detailed pieces of writing.
To make it easier:
- Keep copywork to a minimum. Start with a short sentence.
- Allow your little one to dictate writing projects to you. They dictate, and you write, word for word, what they say.
- Go slower
One last thing, I do want to mention that while this is a religious curriculum. It would be easy to leave out the scripture passages without losing any of the ‘meat’ of the program. Most of the biblical references that I noticed are in the copywork sections, and there are alternative exercises.
Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the Rabbit Trails curriculum options. They teach in a gentle and fun way using great books. That is all a win in my book!
Update – There are now more Rabbit Trails Curriculum options! Be sure to check out these new additions.
Keep reading . . .
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- Detailed All About Reading Level 1 Review
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