The Christmas Countdown Chain

How many different countdowns until Christmas do you have going on at home? We only have 3, so of course we need at least 1 more! 🙂  You can never have too many ways to countdown to one of the most anxiously awaited holidays of the year! Our other countdowns involve chocolate or Legos, but this one is homemade~ the best kind in my opinion.

I was reminded of the paper countdown chain a few months ago when Tinkerlab did a Halloween countdown chain.  I had  meant to do one at that time, but it seems there’s never enough time for everything, and we, unfortunately, never got around to doing it.

Then today, as Lucy and I were looking at all our Christmas ornaments on the tree, the thought of the countdown paper chain came to mind again. What a fun activity to do together, and there’s lots to learn from it as well!

First, we looked at our calendar and counted how many days until Christmas so we’d know how many links our chain would need. Then, we selected our colors and prepared the strips of paper. We also grabbed some colored pencils and a stapler. I thought it might be fun to decorate each chain link. Lucy took it a step further and decided to write or draw something that was special to her on each strip of paper so she would be reminded each day of the things that made her happy. Then, together,  we stapled them in a simple a b a b pattern to form the chain. (This activity presents a great opportunity to introduce patterns to your child or to work on different pattern formations. You can later go outside or walk around the house looking for other patterns!)

Theo wanted to join in too. He really wants to be a big boy now and sit at the table with us so I plopped him up in the chair. He did some drawing with us! Lucy and I later made him his own chain (which I think has already been a little “overly loved” and is in quite a few pieces around the house.)

We had a lot of fun working on this. It was actually quite relaxing to sit and talk together as Lucy sketched and drew~ kind of calming. And she’s very excited to get to remove a link each day and see what she drew~ a daily surprise of happiness! Hopefully this chain will last a bit longer than Theo’s and make it to Christmas day!