Craft Time: Paper Chain Lent Countdown

For some reason this is the first year my kids have really acknowledged the season of Lent and I have to say, they are very confused by it. We've talked about how it's a time that leads up to Easter, which they understand. But then, when they ask how soon Easter is, they are confused that it's still so far away. I think what is especially hard is the length of Lent. At 46 days, Lent is almost double the length of Advent. It's especially hard for my kids to understand how long this time is because we don't have a lent equivalent of an Advent calendar that we can move through. Each day they are closer to Easter, but they have no visual representation of this movement.

I was thinking about all of this when I came across Sally Llyod-Jones suggestion to make a paper chain to show the length of Lent. This seemed like the perfect solution! It gives the kids a visual for the length of Lent and was something we could make together. Here's how we made ours:

I wanted to use this project to recycle some of our paper grocery bags, so to start, I used my quilting mat and cutter to cut out the sides of three grocery bags.

Then, we painted the insides of the paper bags. We used simple washable paints, like these, and these dot markers (afiiliate links).

Once our artwork had dried, I cut the paper bags into 2" strips and then cut those strips in half to make the links for our chain. Be sure to cut enough strips. You'll need 1 for each day in Lent, plus one for Easter morning if you want. If you made it today so that you can start taking chains off tomorrow, you would need 41. (Remember, with Sundays, there are 46 days in Lent, not counting Easter Sunday. We are on day 6).

Then we began to assemble the chain. We taped our edges, but you could also use a glue stick. I let the kids do the taping, which they loved.

As we went, I wrote the names of the stories we'll read from the Jesus Storybook Bible on the back of the chains. That way, as we take the chains off, they'll tell us what story we should read that day.
(I left the Sunday chains blank since those are catch up days.)

Here's our completed chain! We'll take one link off each day until it's Easter Sunday. We had so much fun making it and the kids have such a better sense of Lent now that they can see how long the chain is. 

It took us a couple hours total to make our chain, but if you do something more simple--construction paper with numbers--it would take even less time that that. Since I wanted to reuse paper bags, we had a larger process for making ours. We only finished ours yesterday so, even though Lent has already started, I would say it's not too late to make one. No matter when you start, it will be a helpful and fun activity for kids.