‘How Many Days Until …’ Paper Chain

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My son knows that Easter is coming and that we will be traveling to MomMom and PopPop’s house this year. He is so excited and keeps asking, every single day, “how many days until Easter?”

I got tired of saying, “it’s a lot of days.” Or, “it’s a long time away.” At Christmas, we use an advent calendar and that really helped him understand how long away it was. We try so hard to get our kids excited, but if you tell them about special days too soon, it’s something you might regret.

A couple of nights ago we created a paper chain to use as an advent calendar of sorts. Each paper link on the chain represents one day. Each morning my son can rip a chain off the link. As the link gets smaller, he’ll know that Easter is getting closer. I think he was surprised how many links we needed — 32 days is a lot of links. Since we made the chain, he hasn’t once asked how many days until Easter? Mission accomplished.

How to make a paper chain:

• Cut paper into about 1 inch wide strips. No ruler needed. We used a paper cutter and just eye-balled the measurement. I even used scrap paper. It would certainly look more festive with construction paper or scrap booking paper, but I used what we had available.
• Form a circle with paper strip and glue or staple ends together. We opted for the stapler because my son loves using it and we didn’t have to wait for the glue to dry.
• Intersect second strip into first circle. Staple/glue second strip together to form circle.
• Intersect third strip into second circle. Staple/glue third strip together to form circle.
• Continue intersecting, stapling until chain is complete.

I added numbers to each circle so that I would know how many days are left without having to count the chain the next time I get asked the how many days question.

Just so you know … there are 30 days until Easter.