Crafts to Celebrate Ridvan

In my ongoing quest to learn more about holidays I don’t know about (and taking you along for the scroll), let’s learn about Ridvan, which is a 12-day festival taking place in 2026 from April 20 to May 2.

This holiday, also known as the Most Great Festival or the King of Festivals, is part of the Baha’i faith and commemorates when their leader, Baha’u’llah, was exiled from Baghdad in 1863. In preparing to leave the city he spent 12 days in the garden of Ridvan (which means paradise) saying goodbye to his followers and revealing teachings and publicly declaring himself as a manifestation of God. You can learn more about it from this video.

Because Baha’u’llah was in a garden, where roses were gathered each day and distributed to followers, gardens and roses are a big part of Ridvan celebrations.

Delighted Hearts has a beautiful 3D printable you can cut out and assemble to make your own garden of Ridvan. They also have several Ridvan coloring pages with quotes and prayers on them that would be nice cards to make for the festival.

Combine this with the 3D Ridvan garden printables from Home of Peace Studio to make a whole Ridvan scene kids can color and assemble.

Another great resource for learning about Ridvan and Ridvan crafts is All Done Monkey. They have a post all about ways to celebrate Ridvan in community with kids, including having a picnic in a garden or doing some gardening. She also has a collection of craft ideas including rose crafts, crowns, a flower board and more. And why not make some rose cookies to go with your crafting session?

A Gladsome Heart has a 12 page printable activity book that includes the story of Ridvan, coloring pages, a maze, crossword and more.

Enable Me to Grow also has some great ideas for celebrating Ridvan, including a tea party in an indoor tent (how fun is that?), making a flower board (shown here) and a felt garden.

This one isn’t specific to Ridvan of course but you can learn how to make an easy paper rose with this tutorial from Mom Does Reviews.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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