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Make a personalized countdown to Christmas!

What You’ll Need

red and green paper
pencil
craft knife
markers
glitter glue
Christmas-themed stickers

Instructions

The instructions to making a Christmas Countdown are very easy. An older child could create this on their own, with little supervision while younger children would need help since a craft knife is needed.

1. Choose either the red or green paper to be the front of the Christmas countdown. Draw 25 shapes on the colored paper that will become flaps. They can be half-circles, squares or triangles or a combination of any shape. Cut along the sides and bottom of the shape so that you can fold it up to create a flap. You should have 25 flaps.

*Be careful not to cut the shape out! You want to create flaps that can be opened up.

2. On top of each flap, write a number corresponding to each day in December until Christmas, from 1 to 25.

3. Glue the top sheet to the other colored paper. Make sure you don't glue down the flaps! Depending on how big you have made the flaps, you won't need much glue at all.

4. Open each flap and draw or write a Christmas-related image or words.

5. Decorate the front using markers and glitter glue. Close the flaps with Christmas-themed stickers.

*Tip: Use number stickers for the numbers. Also, don't put the numbers in order - this way when it is time to check the countdown, the child has to do just a bit of searching, adding to the surprise of how many days are left!

Another idea is to cut the flaps large enough to hide stickers. You could have some flaps contain stickers and others would have a Christmas phrase or picture behind it.

Get creative with what you can hide in the flaps! In addition to stickers you could add coupons for various things or money. The Christmas Countdown can be put together in an afternoon - quick and easy crafts are fun to make, especially with little ones who have a hard time sitting for a long project.

Submitted by Leximom