Mardi Gras Printable Learning Activities for Kids

Mardi Gras is a fun holiday that you can use in the classroom even if you don’t talk about what it is really about. Bringing in beads and the colors of purple, green and gold is great if it’s winter where you are, and there are lots of fun printable Mardi Gras learning activities for kids out there to use in the classroom or at home.

Play a printable memory game as part of a Mardi Gras party or just for fun any day around Fat Tuesday with this free printable from The Purple Pumpkin Blog. These images are so fun!

Learn more about Mardi Gras with this word search printable from Rock Your Homeschool. It includes words like Shrove Tuesday, Rex and doubloons, so get ready to explain some Mardi Gras lore if you use this one.

Homeschool Preschool has a great printable activity set for Mardi Gras that includes color and trace pages, matching, handwriting practice, color by number, color and count and more.

In the Playroom has a downloadable activity mat for Mardi Gras that include a word search, tracing, coloring and more.

Or grab the coloring pages from Homeschool of 1. These include some facts about Mardi Gras icons like masks, beads, king cake and the baby that goes into the cake. The Artisan Life also has a fun collection of do a dot coloring pages.

It’s not Mardi Gras without some fun masks, so grab the printable masks from Kitchen Table Classroom and have kids color and decorate them. You can even have your own indoor parade to get some movement in.

Speaking of getting some movement in, you’ll also want to download the Mardi Gras motor activity cards from Pink Oatmeal. These include things like marching around the room, standing on one foot or jumping from side to side, which kids are sure to have fun with.

Need more ideas for Mardi Gras activities to do with kids? Check out my list of Mardi Gras activities and class party ideas from years past.

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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