Paper Chains

This Christmas craft is great for developing fine motor skills and also coordination! It takes a little practice for children to get the hang of this craft but once they do there will be no stopping them!

Set Up

This craft was incredibly quick and easy to set up. I used the origami paper strips, glue and lolly stick all of which come in our December activity box. You could of course cut your own paper strips at home and this can be done from whatever paper you have to hand, plain, coloured, newspapers, magazine or even wrapping paper would all work.

Getting started with paper chains is definitely the trickiest part but once the technique is learnt it definitely gets easier. M once she heard the instructions was off. For F I started by holding the two ends of the next piece of paper to be looped whilst she applied the glue. Then she would stick them together. By the end she was determined to attempt the entire process by herself.

Once they got going a level of competition was started by M. She wanted to constantly know how many loops that had each done. So each time we counted all of their loops which was a brilliant bit of counting practice! Then next came comparison in terms of length. M started to, each time she added another loop, check how long her paper chain was compared to her height. It was fascinating for both of them to see their paper chains getting closer to their actual height. Then once they were finished they went around seeing what else they could find that was the same length as their paper chains. For M this was then an opportunity to practice measuring in non standard units. The cupboard handles were 5 paper loops long and the bench was 9 loops long! So all in all in turned out to be a great maths activity too!

For activities like this sent to your home each month visit our shop!