Mardi Gras Activities for Kids

Mardi Gras isn’t a holiday that’s necessarily celebrated by a lot of kids, but it’s still fun to bring into the classroom if for no other reason than to bring some color in the middle of winter (beads, masks and cake wouldn’t hurt, either).

If you want to talk about what Mardi Gras is with kids, this video from PBS Kids is a good place to start:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXCucOH4d0A?si=oBjajfW2dDefvbYF]

Mardi Gras is known as a time for parades, music, good food and fun. The colors associated with Mardi Gras are purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power. You’ll often find beads in these colors, or you can add them to your sensory activities this time of year (for example making slime or playdough in those colors). Or make a fun calming jar with Mardi Gras beads inside, with this tutorial from Mom Dot.

These printable Mardi Gras Masks from Kitchen Table Classroom are fun for kids to decorate, and you can wear them as you parade around the classroom or playground.

Homeschool Preschool has printable worksheets with a Mardi Gras theme, including writing practice, color by number and color and count, among others. You can get more color by number coloring pages from Rock Your Homeschool. And Jinxy Kids has a printable Mardi Gras word search.

Pink Oatmeal has cute printable action cards to get kids moving when they need a brain break (or maybe for use in indoor recess?). They include things like balancing, jumping and walking in certain ways to get some energy out when kids are cooped up.

You can also play with Mardi Gras beads in educational ways, as this post from Books and Giggles describes. Use them to form letters, count necklaces of different colors and graph them, make shapes and more!

How do you celebrate Mardi Gras with kids or bring it into the classroom? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Mardi Gras books for kids.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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