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.

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Mardi Gras Printable Learning Activities for Kids

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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