Birthday Countdown Chain

It's a new year. Christmas is over, but Eric's birthday is at the end of the month. Being 4 years old, he doesn't have a great understanding of time; that is, the difference between a minute, hour, day, week, etc. Having an Advent Calendar was a big help in visually reinforcing just how close Christmas was coming. He knows his birthday is coming "soon", so I thought a countdown chain would be helpful. Each day he'll tear off a link and as the chain gets shorter, the day of his birthday party would be closer.

One of Eric's Christmas presents was a Crayola Art Supply kit. It came with crayons, markers, colored pencils, watercolors, construction paper, scissors and glue. I thought I would use the paper, markers and glue to make this craft. Then I remembered my stapler and thought that would be a lot easier than the glue. I folded the paper into sections and then let Eric cut out the chain links with the scissors.

I got out the markers and encouraged him to color the last link, the "birthday" link. He finished it and then started to color another link.
I hadn't planned on that - this was going to be a fast project. But hey, this is his chain! So he would color a link, give it to me, and together we would staple the link onto the chain.

After about 10 links, he began to get a little restless. Freshly colored links became belt buckles (?) or projectiles. After some redirection, we finally got all the links colored and assembled.
A simple ribbon tie and a nail in the wall - presto! Our birthday countdown chain was done.