Bunny Hop: Easter Toddler Activity for Gross Motor Skills

Looking for a great Easter Toddler Activity to do with your toddler that's no mess AND easy to set up? Try Bunny Hop!

A simple gross motor activity that also works on learning colors! As your child gets older, you can also incorporate numbers and letters into it too (I'll explain later in the post!)

I was inspired to create this activity, after I saw how much my my 2 year old LOVED jumping between these shapes from our KiwiCo Panda Crate “Solve With Me” for 18-24 months. I knew it's be the perfect indoor rainy day Easter activity to burn off that toddler activity! Even better? You can re-use it all spring!

Plus the supplies/items are PERFECT to include in a Toddler Easter Basket if you want to avoid candy!

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Watch more Easter Activities For Toddlers:

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Bunny Hop Supplies

• Paper Colored Bunnies (more on this in step 1)
• Optional: Cube
• Optional: Cricut or scissors

Step 1: Create your bunnies

To create your paper colored bunnies you have 3 options:

NOTE: I'd recommend going with a cardstock (<– brand I used) for your paper no matter which option you choose. Since your toddler will be “hopping” on the bunnies, you want something a bit sturdier than printer paper in my opinion. With that said, you absolutely can use printer paper, it just may not last as long (we've played with these for a week straight already!). Drop me a comment if you do printer paper! I'd love to hear how it holds up!

Option 1: Download and print my FREE Easter Printable pack (it comes with more printables than just for this activity!)

All you'll do is print out the full sized colored bunnies and you're done!

Option 2: Cut your own bunnies on colored construction paper

If you prefer, sketch and cut your own bunnies used colored construction paper or card stock. You could also download my free Printable and use one of those full sheet bunnies as a stencil if you are out of colored ink but don't want to freehand a bunny.

Option 3: Cricut your bunnies!

This is what we used. I had some high quality colored cardstock, and just used the bunny in the free Easter printables pack I mentioned as my template and let my Cricut do the work for me! It was SO easy!

You can cut the Easter bunnies out of construction paper using the free printable as a stencil or you can just print the different colored bunnies out from the free printable.

Step 2: Set up your bunny hop

Arrange your bunnies on the floor – close enough together for your child to hop comfortably amongst them. It's okay if your toddler hops around like a maniac though like mine did haha!

If you want, you are ready to play! Just call out colors and have your toddler hop around. You may have to model “hopping” for them at first.

If you'd like to make this more challenging or advanced as kids get older, keep reading…

Bunny Hop Challenge 1: Color cube

Cut out colored squares that match the bunnies and attach them to a cube. We used our Simon Says Cube that let us slide the colored paper into the cube pockets. Here's a similar dupe from Amazon that is already colored. You could also just take a regular block and tape the colored paper onto the sides though.

This way your toddler can play by themselves or take turns with other kids. You may have to model rolling the cube then hopping to the appropriate color a few times depending on your child's age.

Bunny Hop Challenge 2: Numbers

Once your child has mastered colors, you may want to work on numbers! You can number each bunny, and then either…

• Call out a number and have them jump to it
• Add the number to the cube (this would give you only 6 number options at a time)
• If you want to work on more than 6 numbers at once, just write however many numbers you'd want on pieces of paper/post-its and fold them into a basket. Take turns pulling a number out of the basket, then hopping over to it.

Bunny Hop Challenge 3: Letters

Similar to the numbers, only with letters! This is great for early language learners. You can use some basic phonics arrangements to start depending on where your child is at developmentally. There are loads of phonics arrangements out there, and many montessori schools teach them slightly differently – so there is no “right” or “wrong” way to go about this. But a common recommendation you'll find online includes the following letter sets in order:

1. c, m, a, t
2. s, r, i, p
3. b, f, o, g
4. h, j, u, l
5. d, w, e, n
6. k, q, v, x, y, z

The idea with the montessori approach to teaching the alphabet, is focusing on higher frequency letters first, so they can master more sounds/words that make up the English language quicker. It's basically a faster approach to building an internal rewards system IMO.

So if you are just starting with letters for your child, start with the first set, then go onto the second.

How this would look:

Write one letter from the first set on each bunny. Then either call out the letter, roll a cube with the letters on each side, or spin a turn dial with the letters in each corner, or use the fold up paper approach I explained under numbers and have them hop to the correct letter.

How my toddler enjoyed this activity:

She LOVED it! At first she just ran around like a maniac – not really understanding the concept. Then she understood to “hop.” The color cube was too big of a distraction the first week though. She was more focused on rolling and then running around then pulling out the colored squares. Once we put that away and just called out colors she caught on.

Either way, she had a blast! we've used this activity countless times from 2 years old to almost 3 and a half years old now! Whether it was playing “properly” or just exploring it in her own toddler way.

Set up and clean up time:

Depending on how you choose to create your bunnies, it could as little as 1 minute to print them or as long as 10 minutes to print and cut them out. Once that part of the setup is complete, it literally takes 30 seconds to set up moving forward. Clean up is super easy too. Just stack the paper bunnies away for later use! I have my toddler do this when we are done.

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