It’s the time of year when many families like to count down the days, so I thought I would share our little project. We’re counting down, of course, until D-Day, which is a somewhat ambiguous date but could be as late as December 25th. (Perhaps you’d like to join us in this count-down too?)

I’ve been marking the days off on a calendar, but Aisha still keeps asking how many days are left. It probably doesn’t help that the calendar days stretch across two months/two pages, so she can’t visualise how long is left.

So we made a paper chain. The idea is that you pull off one link of the paper chain at a specific time of day (probably at breakfast) and can watch the chain shrinking as your deadline draws closer.

I can imagine that you could work with the paper chain idea, turning it into a beautiful decoration by choosing lovely paper or alternating colours. We just went with recycled blue paper and decorated the strips with stickers.

I drew lines on sheets of paper, and the girls cut along the lines to make the strips.

Dealing with this age group, this activity does turn into a bit of a Mummy-craft, as the girls can’t really cut straight and can’t manage the sticky-tape. However, with a child a bit older, they could probably manage the craft on their own, doing everything from working out how many strips they need to assembling the whole chain.

Next, the girls decorated the strips with stickers. I also wrote a date on each strip so we could keep track of which day was which.

After the paper chain was assembled, we decided that it could still be decorated a bit further.

Brioni liked to put just two stickers on each link of the chain.

Voila — an easy-to-understand counter that will mark down the days!

If you create your own count-down chain, can you please send me a picture so I can see and share your beautiful creation? Thanks.

(This post was shared as part of Mama Jenn’s Kids Create Linky.)