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Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras and Pancake Day Lessons and Teacher Resources

Lesson Plans | Additional Resources

Introduction:

From the French term, “Mardi Gras” (literally “Fat Tuesday”), [carnival season] has come to mean the whole period of activity … between Epiphany or Twelfth Night and Ash Wednesday. Others treat the final three-day period as being Mardi Gras…. Other cities most famous for their Mardi Gras celebrations include Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Quebec City, Quebec in Canada, Mazatlan, Sinaloa in Mexico, [Mobile, Alabama] and New Orleans in the United States. Many other places have important Mardi Gras celebrations as well. Carnival is an important celebration in most of Europe (except in Ireland and the United Kingdom where the festival is called “shrovetide” ending on Shrove Tuesday or “Pancake Day“, and pancakes are the tradition) and also in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. – Wikipedia.com

Lesson Plans:

• Celebrate Mardi Gras with this shoebox parade idea
• Mardi Gras is celebrated here with masks, a parade, and King Cake

• Here is an easy King Cake idea
• This is an idea for a shoebox fundraising parade to benefit hurricane victims
• Here is a little information on the Pennsylvania Dutch Shrove Tuesday celebration of Fastnacht
• This lesson plan is on Pancake Day / Mardi Gras and involves numerous books about pancakes
• This is a Mardi Gras/Pancake Day celebration idea
• This “Mardi Gras Tokens” physical agility game motivates students to improve their math and teamwork skills

• Not much here yet. If you have any Mardi Gras lesson plans to share, please add them to our site!

Additional Resources:

• Seven great videos on the origin and traditions of Mardi Gras and cajun/creole food await you at History.com
• This is a great Mardi Gras site for kids
• Here are Mardi Gras coloring pages and craft activities from Crayola.com
• This is a five lesson Mardi Gras unit including a PowerPoint and reproducible masks
• HowStuffWorks.com looks at ways to enjoy Mardi Gras in New Orleans; glossary included
• This article on Cajun country Mardi Gras celebrations connects to music and french vocabulary
• This site is “Calling All Children” to the Mardi Gras with additional links
• Have a “ball” with this grades 4-5 lesson plan about beads, masks, Zydeco and gumbo
• Within these Rex in the Classroom pages, you will find teaching aids describing how this year’s Rex Parade theme can be used to inspire art, prose and song writing projects that can be posted and archived on their site.