As winter drags on, spring holidays are already on students’ minds. That makes them a useful hook for learning across subjects and maintaining engagement.
From Easter and Mardi Gras to Ramadan, Holi, Passover, and Nowruz, these holidays give you a way to explore culture, history, math, and science naturally through students’ curiosity. Formative helps turn spring holiday activities into lessons that check understanding, spark discussion, and fit easily into your existing lesson plans.
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Key takeaways:
Communities across the world celebrate spring holidays with unique traditions, histories, and meanings. Explore multiple holidays side by side to help students recognize the cultural differences among them.
You can use the “Spring Holiday Practice Set” in Formative to introduce Mardi Gras, Holi, Passover, Easter, and Nowruz through flexible practice modes like flashcards, quizzes, and writing prompts.
Mardi Gras blends history, culture, and celebration. Its roots connect to the seasons, religious traditions, and regional identity, especially in Louisiana. The “Mardi Gras Challenge” lets you quickly check understanding with a fun, low-pressure quiz that works as a bell ringer or enrichment activity.
Passover focuses on the story of liberation and remembrance. Help students understand how history, tradition, and identity are connected with the “Passover Challenge” in Formative. Use it to check understanding of historical context and symbolism through quick, accessible questions.
Purim tells the story of Esther and highlights themes of courage, identity, and community. Exploring this holiday helps students see how stories shape cultural traditions and celebrations. The “Purim Challenge” allows you to assess students' understanding of key events and customs.
Easter traditions in the U.S. blend religious themes and secular customs. Examining these traditions helps students understand how culture changes while still honoring shared symbols. The “Easter Traditions in the United States” activity supports discussion and analysis with accessible, student-friendly questions.
Exit tickets are an easy way to reinforce learning and capture students' reflections on a lesson. When they’re tied to a celebration, they help students process facts and meaning. The “Holi Festival Exit Ticket” in Formative checks understanding of traditions and symbolism.
Ramadan follows the lunar calendar, so its dates shift each year. Studying Ramadan lets students connect cultural learning with math, astronomy, and geography. Use the “Ramadan Challenge” in Formative to explore traditions, health practices, and global perspectives while checking understanding.
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, and people celebrate with community gatherings, feasts, and traditions worldwide. Understanding Eid helps students appreciate culture and shared values like gratitude and generosity. The “Eid al-Fitr Challenge” in Formative lets you guide students through the holiday’s cultural, historical, and religious significance.
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, has a variety of customs and traditions across different cultures. It gives students a window into regional history, symbolism, and seasonal celebrations. The “Nowruz Challenge” in Formative helps students explore cultural practices, historical context, and global significance.
Key takeaways:
The Book of Esther is a historical and literary text that explains the origins of Purim. Analyzing it helps students practice close reading while exploring themes of power, resilience, and justice.
Use the “Exploring the Book of Esther: The Significance of Purim” activity in Formative to guide students through text-based questions and discussions.
Comparing holidays encourages students to think critically about similarities, differences, and shared themes like renewal and community. Writing about traditions also strengthens analysis and evidence-based reasoning.
The “Exploring Eid al-Fitr and Spring Holidays” essay task in Formative guides students through a structured comparison and lets you give targeted feedback.
The Easter story from Christian traditions offers a narrative for exploring themes of hope, renewal, and transformation. Analyzing this story helps students understand its historical, cultural, and religious significance.
The “Easter Story Analysis” Formative activity guides students through text-based questions and discussions to deepen comprehension and critical thinking.
Key takeaways:
Mardi Gras floats rely on engineering, creativity, and problem-solving. Turn this tradition into a STEM challenge that helps students apply design principles. The “Mardi Gras Float STEM Challenge” guides students through planning, testing, and presenting their designs.
Did you know Easter can lend itself to physics lessons, such as force, gravity, and design principles? Students can build contraptions and test how to protect an egg from breaking when dropped.
The “Easter Egg Drop STEM Activity” in Formative guides students through planning, experimenting, and analyzing results.
Easter-themed counting and pattern activities can engage younger students in early math skills. They provide a fun context for addition and subtraction practice. The “Easter Bunny Math Fun” activity helps K-2 students develop math fluency through themed questions involving bunnies and chicks.
Ramadan gives you an opportunity to help students make authentic math connections through time, fractions, and percentages. These real-world applications can make abstract concepts feel more concrete.
The “Ramadan Fasting Math Challenge” in Formative turns cultural context into an engaging problem-solving practice activity.
Nowruz can be a creative theme for higher-level math problems. Connect cultural events to abstract concepts and boost engagement with the “Nowruz Pre-Calculus Warm-Up”. Students will explore quadratic functions and develop cultural awareness simultaneously.
Key takeaways:
Holi’s vibrant colors can create a natural lesson in art and color theory. Students can learn about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. They can also discover how pigments mix differently than light.
The “Color Mixing and Holi Festival Activity” in Formative provides guided tasks to reinforce these concepts.
Learning Yiddish words and phrases associated with Passover helps students connect language to cultural traditions. The “Passover Yiddish: Words & Phrases Exploration” lesson supports vocabulary development and cultural literacy in context. The activity guides students through translations, meanings, and usage of Yiddish words.
Formative makes it easy to bring spring holiday activities into any classroom without adding extra prep. You can assign ready-made resources, customize questions, and track students' understanding in real-time.
The Formative Library lets you browse hundreds of pre-made activities or create your own using multimedia, PDFs, and Luna AI-powered support to meet your students’ needs across subjects and grade levels.
Don’t have a Formative account yet? Sign up for Formative Free today and start creating activities for Presidents’ Day and beyond!
