3.10.11

Calendar, Countdown, Chain Link and Mathematics

A chain link count down is a classic tool to help kids anticipate exciting events.  It can be tailored to many age groups from pre-school and up.  Today I worked on this activity with my eight year old.  Because it is the beginning of the month we did a mini study of the calendar.  We talked about the holidays in the month- Halloween, Yom Kippor- How many days are in this month, other months and then I asked leading questions to focus on a specific date- October 15th- 
The Jewish equivalent of Christmas for the monkeys- 
The day that Meme and Zadie (grandma and grandpa) come to visit us from Florida

What we used:
I opted for a tape measure because he likes using them
We figured out we needed 12 links on our chain

We chose colors- in this case primary colors-
We calculated how many strips of paper we should divide each piece into
Measured them (just for fun and practice) 

Cut them slowly and carefully


Decided on a pattern- and started glueing them and holding them for a count of 30 seconds
Counting forward, counting backwards, counting by twos to…60, counting by fives, etc.


And now we have a visual count down chain

4 comments:

  1. very cute idea ren! i've never thought of doing a chain link for a count down but think i'm going to use it someday now for sure.

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  2. I love making the links, Although, we haven't done that in quite some time.

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  3. what a great idea :-) thanks for sharing, hugs Laura

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  4. I loved making paper chains as a child, such a fun activity! ~April

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Thanks