Countdown School Days Chain

We have 8 days of school under our belt, and I cannot tell you how many times I have already been asked, "How many more days of school until summer?" What? Oh no, I told Cooper that we can't think about that yet. So, then he started asking how many days until Christmas. So funny! I decided to make him a fun, interactive way for him to see for himself! I knew I wanted to breakdown the months into different colors so that he could visually see how many days are left in that month. I grabbed some fun stickers to decorate the chains so he could look and know which month is which. So, I picked out my color scheme and got to work. There are only a few days left in August, so I combined it with September.

August/September-blue/yellow

October-orange/black

November-burnt orange/yellow

December-red/green

 I measured out 1.25" and was able to get 9 strips across each 12x12 piece of yardstick.

After seeing my long stripes, I decided to cut them in half. I didn't want the chain to be super long and snake around the entire room. By cutting them in half each piece of chain is smaller, making for a more compact finished chain (what I'm going for...you don't want it to look like they have a million days of school until Christmas ;-).

The next step is to get out your school calendar or planner (I made sure to sync my planner with the school calendar so I had all the days off recorded. You don't want to put more chains on than you need. I then quickly, wrote a date on each strip. You don't want to be stuck counting how many days are left if you child forgets to remove a few chains here or there, this will help you know at a quick glance which days should still remain or they can happily remove.

I also recorded any fun dates on the chain too (birthdays, holiday, class parties, etc). This will help teach calendar skills as well. Cooper won't need to ask me when his class Halloween party is, he knows it's labeled with the giant pumpkin sticker.

...and last day before Thanksgiving break is labeled with the giant Turkey sticker!

The chain all finished. I was amazed that it didn't look as long as I thought it might, Yay!

75 school days until Christmas break! We can do this!

We hung the chain in Cooper's room (making sure little hands cannot get ahold of it)  and today he proudly ripped off his first chain before school. He's already asked me if I will make him another chain to countdown the rest of the year when this chain is all gone! Yay, I made my first graders day!