For years now, our family has made our own Advent activity chain. As our children grew, the activities grew and changed a bit with them. This year, we may make a chain without activities at all (gasp!).
I've also continued to make one designed for families with lots of little children. We put them all together and then gave them to our godchildren or children in my Catechesis class or the neighbors - whoever we thought might like a bit of Advent planned and ready to go.
Early on, I would print them out and make them, but now, First Daughter does it! She cuts all the activity pages into rectangles, slices pink and purple construction paper, and tapes one activity one each slice. We then deliver them to local families with little ones. They're easier to deliver in stacks of flat rectangles; it's pretty simple for the families to link the chains themselves. We include a little paragraph to explain, just in case. I don't know if everyone loves them, but I've heard from a few mothers that it's nice to have something so simple and easy for little ones.
Find the strip for December 24th. Tape or staple it into a loop. Find the strip with the next date on it (December 23rd) and run it through the loop you just made. Tape or staple it. Continue with all of the strips until you reach November 30th. You’ll end up with a chain of loops – one for each day of Advent. Each day, tear off the strip on the end for the day’s date and do the activity together.
We always use pink for the third week of Advent and purple for the rest of the links, but you could also alternate pink and purple, or use all purple. Or just use whatever construction paper you have lying around.
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| An old picture of a chain long used up |
