Make a Christmas Countdown Chain to Kick off the Holiday Season

Hi all.  

Before all the craziness of December gets started, I wanted to share a fun little project I've been doing with my class for several years, a countdown to Christmas paper chain.

Believe me, the kids love these.  Here's how they work:

-Students will get a bell topper and strips of paper to make the chain.

-They will make our chains on December 1, so each student should get 24 strips to make 24 links.  The last link should be on Christmas Eve.  (It's no problem if you don't make the countdown chains on December 1.  Just be sure to adjust the number of links students will make.)

-This year I'm sneaking in a little word work practice by having my young learners write a word from our word wall on each of the strips.  (This step is unnecessary, but a great way to get in a teeny bit more practice.)

-Since I do not have staplers for all students.  We use glue to put the links together.  I usually have to model a few for the class, so that they understand the process.

I tell the students to hold their link together and count to 30 before they add their next one  If a student is falling way behind, I usually swoop in with my stapler and parter with that student.

After all the links are together, I staple the bell topper to one end of the chain.  There is a poem on the topper.  You can check it out in the picture below.

When students finish, they have a chain that is (usually) taller than they are.  They get such a kick out of it.  They are also really excited to tear the links.  

Click here if you would like a free copy of the pattern I used to make our Christmas Countdown Chain.

A couple of other December resources you may want to check out are my, newly updated, literacy and math centers.
To Be Jolly {10 Literacy Centers for December} includes practice with contractions, vowel sounds, antonyms, rhyming words, syllables, parts of speech, types of sentences, and more.  You can click on the picture below for more details.

To Be Jolly {10 Math Centers for December} also has loads of seasonally themed skill work.  Centers focus on basic addition, basic subtraction, missing addends, time to the half hour, place value, skip counting, number comparisons, and more.

To find out more about my December math centers, click on the picture below.

That's it for now.
I hope you have a great rest of your week.
Happy teaching!