ELA Spring Classroom Activities for 4th & 5th Grade

Spring is the perfect time to bring fresh energy into your classroom. As the days get warmer, students are eager for activities that feel fun and engaging. By incorporating spring classroom activities, you can keep 4th and 5th graders motivated while reinforcing essential ELA skills. These ELA spring classroom activities offer a mix of word work, grammar practice, and figurative language fun—helping students stay focused while enjoying the season.

Spring-Themed ELA Classroom Activities for 4th & 5th Grade

1. Spring Word Work Activities

Spelling practice can feel redundant at this time of the year. One way to make spelling practice engaging is by incorporating seasonal activities into their routine.

Instead of traditional activities, encourage students to interact with their word lists through hands-on, seasonal activities. These small changes can make a big difference in motivation and retention.

Spring-Themed Word Work Ideas:

• Spring Colors – Let students use spring colors (pastels or bright markers) to write and highlight their words.
• Plastic Eggs – Write different activities on strips of paper and place them in plastic eggs. Have students choose an egg and work on the activity provided using their word list. 
  • To make this even easier, use pre-made activities like Egg Word Search, Carrot Up and Down Words, and Spring Syllables for Spring Spelling Practice & Word Work. Simply print the pages, place them in a bin, and have students choose a matching worksheet when they open their egg!

This simple setup turns spelling practice into a fun, low-prep Spring Classroom Activity that keeps students engaged while reinforcing key skills.

2. Spring-Themed Grammar Activities

By this time of year, students have spent months reviewing grammar rules, and with test prep in full swing, things can start feeling repetitive. Adding spring classroom activities helps break up the routine while keeping students engaged in meaningful practice.

Spring Grammar Activity Ideas:

• Cloudy with a Chance of Rainbow Sentence Writing – Provide students with white cardstock paper and rainbow colored strips. Have students practice their sentence writing by writing different types of sentences on each color.  
  • Example:
    • red – declarative
    • orange – interrogative
    • yellow – imperative
    • green – exclamatory
    • blue – compound
    • purple – complex
  • Have students make sure to check sentences for proper capitalization and punctuation.

• Spring-Themed Grammar Worksheets – If you need no-prep practice, Spring ELA Activities Worksheets provide engaging grammar exercises that make review more interactive. 
  • Some of the activities included in the worksheets are:
    • Funny Bunny Commas – Students practice commas in direct address.
    • Egg-cellent Plurals – Students practice forming regular and irregular plurals in a crossword-style puzzle. After completing the puzzle, they unscramble a hidden spring-themed answer!
    • Verb Tenses Color Match – Offers the opportunity to practice identifying and correcting verb tense shifts while coloring an Easter egg-themed picture. 

3. Spring-Themed Figurative Language Activities

Figurative language can be tricky for students to grasp, but using spring-themed activities makes it more engaging and memorable. By connecting idioms, metaphors, and similes to familiar seasonal concepts, students can better understand their meanings and usage.

Spring Figurative Language Activity Ideas:

• Spring into Idioms – Introduce spring-themed idioms like “a spring in your step” or “April showers bring May flowers.” Have students illustrate and explain their meaning in their own words.
• Peeps and Phrases – Use the Peeps Spring Idioms Activities to help students explore figurative language in a hands-on way that also makes a beautiful bulletin board display. This craft-based activity allows students to write, define, and illustrate idioms on fun, Peeps-shaped cutouts, making for a bright and engaging display.
• Simile Garden – Have students write spring-themed similes (e.g., “The sun is as bright as a daffodil”). They can then create a flower-shaped craft by writing their simile on each petal.

Using seasonal figurative language activities helps students develop a deeper understanding of literary devices while making learning interactive and fun.

More Fun Spring ELA Activities

4. Easter Egg Reading Challenge

• Fill plastic eggs with reading challenges or reading response activities (e.g., “Whisper read,” “Summarize what you read,” “Find a figurative language example”).  
• Students pick an egg during independent reading time and complete the challenge. This adds an element of surprise and engagement while reinforcing comprehension skills.

5. Spring-Themed Reading Puzzles

Puzzles are great for early finishers, morning work, or literacy centers. Use Spring Puzzles like word searches and crosswords to reinforce comprehension and expand vocabulary.

Puzzles are extremely versatile. Expand their use by:

• Adding an extra challenge – Have students write sentences using the words they find or define key vocabulary.
• Turning it into a partner activity – Students can quiz each other on puzzle answers or discuss how the words connect to a spring-themed text.

I hope you found a few spring classroom activities to make learning fun for both you and your students. Happy Spring, my co-teacher!