Christmas paper chain

I remember making these paper chains when I was a kid. I also remember how I would tear off one chain link each day, counting each link that was left and excited about Christmas getting closer and closer, until the very last one was left on Christmas. And I always marveled over how they were the exact number of links that led right up to Christmas Day. Silly me, it never occurred to me that my teacher just made sure we used enough links for it to last until then.

Recently, we saw the movie Jingle All The Way, and in the movie, there was a Christmas paper chain hanging on the wall, which we must assume was made by the young character, Jamie. The chain in the movie had a lot of links on it and I thought that was odd since the movie starts two days before Christmas. I guess they were not using it as a “countdown chain.”

The kids didn’t make these chains at school, so I thought it would be nice to include this activity for them to do while they are on Winter Break. Of course, it’s too late for it to work as a “countdown chain,” but when Jennifer had heard about this idea, she was really insistent that we do this. They had fun tracing lines along the ruler to create the strips on the colored paper (I cut the strips out), and it was a challenge for them to glue together the links to keep each link perfectly round and fit together to form a chain. In the end, they were happy with their creation and Jesse was so proud of himself for gluing almost every single one of his links together.

Today’s Christmas movie is The Santa Clause.

Here are the kids with their chains: