Activities for Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)

Celebrate Shrove Tuesday by exploring the Christian story behind its origins, and introducing the season of Lent, or celebrate with pancake-themed activities from Purple Mash in your classroom.

What is Shrove Tuesday?

For Christians around the world, Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent begins, and is a day for celebration and confessing sins (the word 'shrove' comes from 'shrive' which means to give forgiveness for someone's sins).

Shrove Tuesday is also celebrated by many in the UK as Pancake Day, when rich foods like butter, milk and eggs are used up before the 40-day fasting of Lent.

Many other countries also celebrate Shrove Tuesday with delicious foods, and many of them call the day 'Mardi Gras', meaning 'Fat Tuesday'.

Shrove Tuesday Classroom Activities

Children can write about Shrove Tuesday and Pancake Day in this template, with handy prompts and sentence starters. Or, they could create a poster advertising a Shrove Tuesday event, perhaps a pancake race?

Students can also watch the video within the template and write a pancake recipe or, put the instructions in order.

Younger children will enjoy adding their own toppings to a stack of pancakes in this paint project.

More Pancake Day lesson ideas

There are lots of other ways to use Purple Mash tools to link to Shrove Tuesday:

• Conduct a survey of favourite pancake toppings with 2Survey
• Use 2Count or 2Graph to share the findings
• Read children The Very Big Pancake and then get them to write and illustrate it using 2Create a Story
• Code a pancake game using 2DIY 3D - players could collect different toppings for their pancake
• Create your own pancake brand - compose a pancake advertising jingle using Tracklab, and design some packaging in 2Design and Make

All of these resources and tools are included in a Purple Mash subscription. If you'd like to explore Purple Mash for your school, click the button to set up a trial. Home users can try it here.