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Easter is both a religious holiday and a secular spring celebration that your students are likely already familiar with. You can use an Easter activity in ELA, social studies, or STEM to explore history, traditions, and even a little engineering in your classroom.
[Build background knowledge with an Easter activity in ELA](id-ela)
Key takeaways:
Build context before reading so students understand both the religious and secular sides of Easter.
Pair fiction and nonfiction to strengthen comprehension and text comparison skills.
Turn one Easter activity into multiple standards practice by layering summary and compare-and-contrast work.
When you plan an Easter activity in ELA, you’re not just “doing something fun.” You have the chance to build real background knowledge for students who enter class with varying understandings of the holiday. Some might know the religious story, others know the bunny and eggs. Some know neither.
You can anchor learning in nonfiction first, then move into literature. That structure helps students build understanding before they analyze themes, traditions, or symbolism.
How can you use fiction and nonfiction to teach about Easter?
Your students might have big questions about the upcoming holiday. What is Easter? Why is it celebrated? How have celebrations changed over time? You can use fiction and nonfiction to answer these questions and practice compare-and-contrast skills along the way.
Follow this lesson structure to hit all the important points:
Finally, have students compare and contrast the two texts using the guiding focus question, “How are the ideas from the articles similar or different?”
[Teach history and traditions with an Easter activity in social studies](id-ss)
Key takeaways:
Clarify the distinction between religious and secular traditions so students understand where customs come from.
Use spring holidays for comparison to build cultural literacy.
Lean on Newsela Social Studies resources to support structured discussion without extra prep.
An Easter activity in social studies works best when it builds context instead of just trivia. Students often know about egg hunts, but not why we have them. Fewer understand why Easter moves dates or how its traditions started.
You can help them see the bigger picture by exploring history, civic traditions, and how religious holidays show up in public life.
How do people celebrate Easter worldwide?
Easter looks different depending on where and how it’s celebrated. Some traditions center on church services and others focus on egg hunts or festivals.
Use this Easter activity to help students understand both religious meaning and cultural traditions. Then connect it to how Easter appears in public life. To build that understanding, use resources like:
What other religious holidays happen during the spring?
Spring holidays include more than just Easter. Students may hear about Passover, Ramadan, and Eid al-Fitr around the same time. The overlap can spark questions about how these holidays are the same and different. To support that comparison, you can use the following lesson:
First, explore the similarities and differences among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holidays such as Passover, Easter, Ramadan, and Eid al-Fitr.
Next, break students into jigsaw groups, assign each group a holiday to study, and have them create a presentation for the class.
Finally, have students share their presentations with the class. Encourage the listeners to ask questions and take notes about information they find interesting.
Newsela Knack: Interested in more religious studies? Check out our Comparative Religions social studies elective course that explores Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Dharmic religions, East Asian and Indigenous religions, and contemporary religious issues.
[Use a STEM Easter activity with eggs and engineering](id-sci)
Key takeaways:
Turn a familiar Easter symbol into a standards-aligned STEM task without reinventing your lesson plans.
Connect science content to real-world traditions to make learning feel relevant.
Build engineering skills through hands-on design challenges that students actually enjoy.
An Easter activity doesn’t have to stay in ELa or social studies. Eggs are already part of the holiday, making them an easy access point for a STEM activity.
Instead of just decorating eggs, turn them into a design challenge. Start with background knowledge, then move into experimentation.
How can you turn an Easter egg into a STEM challenge?
An egg drop is a simple STEM activity, but it works. Students apply engineering thinking while solving a clear problem: Protect a raw egg from cracking. You can follow this lesson sequence to help build students’ understanding of the concept:
Finally, find out how sturdy (or fragile!) an egg can be by using engineering skills and building a contraption that protects a raw egg from cracking when dropped from different heights.
Cover spring holidays across subjects with Newsela
Spring holidays give you a natural way to incorporate timely topics into your already meaningful lessons. Easter is one of them. When you approach it intentionally, one Easter activity can support literacy, historical thinking, and even engineering skills.
And you don’t have to build it all from scratch.
With Newsela’s high-quality instruction products, you get leveled texts, interactive videos, primary sources, and ready-to-use activities. That means less planning time for you and more meaningful learning for your students.
Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for an account for free and start your 45-day trial. You’ll get access to premium content and activities to help you teach about Easter and every spring holiday with confidence.
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