Countdown Chart

There are times in our lives when one parent (or both!) go away for an extended amount of time, like a deployment or work or even just vacation. These might be times that it's kind of fun to make a countdown chart with your child, to ward off the question, "When is Daddy coming home?" as I hear a lot in my house!

A couple of months ago Stephen was gone for a week or so for a class. After a few days I got really tired of explaining to Brianna when he was coming home, because I knew that time meant nothing to her. So I came up with this chart:

I basically went online and found clip art to go with a couple of big events during the day. Then when that event happened, Brianna could cross it off the list. It became a fun game and made her really look forward to crossing the things off the list. It wasn't long before she was telling me exactly what would happen before Daddy came home!

I did really simple, big events that I knew she would remember:

Friday - Go to preschool
Friday - Go to bed
Saturday - Springfest/play date
Saturday - Go to bed
Sunday - Go to church in the morning
Sunday - Go to church at night
Monday - Go to preschool

DADDY IS HOME!! (He would pick her up from preschool that day.) I wouldn't do this for an entire deployment probably, but for 1-2 weeks of being gone it was pretty fun.

Just thought it might be something for some of you to be able to use!