Thursday, December 1, 2011

Christmas Countdown Chain printable *free*

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It’s hard to explain to little ones that there are still 24 days until Christmas.  Since we put up our tree, Alex is asking me every day, “Mom, is it Christmas yet?”  When you’re little, you need VISUAL reminders.
This got me thinking about the Christmas Countdown chain that I used to make with my second graders every year.  (I mentioned that in my last blog post.)  You begin on December 1st with a chain of 24 links, then you remove a link each day.  As the chain grows shorter, your kids have a visual idea that the wait for Christmas is growing shorter!

For my boys, I designed a new star topper in Photoshop.  After printing and laminating one copy for each boy, we made paper chains together.  I stapled the chains, but Max handed me a green chain, then a red chain to practice colors.  Alex helped me count to 24 links.  Both boys hung their own chain on their bedroom door.

You can keep it just that simple, OR you can use it as I did with my second graders: write a simple prayer request on each link.  As you remove it before bed at night, include that request in your bedtime prayers with your children.  My second graders wrote down their classmates name.  For your family, you could pray for friends, relatives, neighbors, or anyone/anything else that comes to mind.

As long as I was designing a printable, I figured it might as well be shared.  Sorry for getting this out on December 1st…it was a last-minute project!  I guess you can always make 23 links if you do it tomorrow! ;)

11 comments:

Susan Che3rmak said...

great idea! love it!

Mrs. Whary said...

Dawn, I LOVE it!! Going to print it out NOW and add to the boys door - they keep asking me if Christmas is tomorrow......and it;s only the 1st December!! Love the prayer idea too :-) You my friend are awesome!!

Lori said...

We've done the chain before, too, but instead of prayer requests, I wrote Christmas activities on each link, so they take it off in the morning, and they know what we're going to do that day. Have to line those up with a calendar,though... Love the stars, I'm going to use those!!

Anonymous said...

Cute!! We have a paper chain we made the day after Thanksgiving but I love the idea of adding prayer requests to it!

Pam from Over the Big Moon said...

AWESOME! I love this! I'm going to share this on FB now! Thanks again Dawn!

Jessica said...

That is on our to do list for today or tomorrow. Now we have a cool start to put on top. Thanks for sharing!

Dayna Chu said...

SOOOOOo need this for my son to help him with the wait! Love the prayer idea too. Blessings!

Anonymous said...

My mother in law babysits a preschool aged boy who brought home something similar to this from school today. I just printed out the star part and can't wait to make the chains with my girls tomorrow! Thank you for sharing!

Ms.M said...

I got the same question today from my students when I introduced the new month. Thanks for the great visual.

Ms. M
Ms.M's Blog
A Teacher's Plan

Unknown said...

Thank you for this! I'm starting a bit late, but it's a perfect activity to put this together today since our Christmas outing was canceled due to too much snow. Thank you!

Emma Hamstra said...

We finally made ours tonight :) I let the two older kids do their own and I loved hearing their prayer requests. We're going to prayer as a family at bedtime until Christmas instead of separately in their rooms so we can share our requests together. Thanks for making our Christmas that much more special :)