Paper Chain Garland Strips — Printable Patterned Links (Christmas, Halloween, Birthday, Rainbow)
Patterned paper chain strips laid edge to edge across a landscape sheet so nothing is wasted. Pick a theme — candy-cane stripes, bats, confetti, rainbow — and a strip width, print, cut along the shared lines, loop and glue. The sheet tells you how many links and how many metres you get.
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5 strips per page · each link ≈ 8.1 cm across · 10 pages ≈ 50 links ≈ 3.4 m of chain.
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What are paper chain garland strips? Paper chain garland strips are patterned printable strips laid edge to edge on a landscape sheet, each with a marked glue tab, that you cut, loop, and link into a Christmas, Halloween, birthday, or rainbow countdown chain.
How to make paper chain garland strips: Pick a theme, strip width, and colour, download the PDF, print on copy paper or light cardstock, cut along the shared lines, loop the first strip and glue its tab, then thread each next strip through the previous loop before gluing.
One link a day: the paper chain as a countdown
A paper chain is the oldest countdown in the classroom. Make one link for every day left — 24 for an advent chain, the number of school days until winter break for a last-day-of-school countdown, ten for the last stretch before a birthday — and tear one off each morning. With the Christmas theme the four patterns alternate on the sheet, so a 24-link chain uses exactly six of each; print one sheet of the 3 cm strips on Letter and you have 5 links, so an advent chain needs 5 pages. Write the date, a tiny task, or a kindness challenge on the inside of each strip before you glue it: the Plain theme leaves the body white for exactly that.
How many links per metre? A strip of length L glued with a 1.5 cm overlap makes a ring about (L − 1.5) ÷ π across — 8.1 cm for the full-width strip on this sheet. Because each ring threads through the next, a hanging chain is roughly 85 % of the sum of the diameters, so you need about 15 links per metre, or 3 pages. The subtitle on the sheet does this arithmetic for the width and paper you picked; cut on the dashed trim line for shorter 20 cm strips and you get a tighter chain with smaller rings, which looks better on a small tabletop tree.
Paper or cardstock? Ordinary 80 gsm copy paper curls into a ring with no effort and glues fast — the right choice for kindergarten hands and for a chain that will be torn apart one link at a time. Cardstock (160 gsm+) makes crisp, stiff rings that hold their shape on a mantel or across a doorway, but it fights the curl and needs a firmer glue. For fastening, a glue stick is tidiest but needs a 10-second press; a stapler is instant and is how most classrooms get through 200 links in an afternoon; clear tape works on cardstock where glue stick fails. The 1.5 cm hatched glue zone at the end of every strip is sized so a single staple or a swipe of glue stick lands fully on the overlap.
Beyond Christmas trees and mantels, an orange-and-black chain is the cheapest Halloween party garland there is, the Birthday theme strings across a doorway or along a dessert table, and the Rainbow theme — seven strips, one per colour, in spectrum order — doubles as a lesson in colour patterns for kindergarten: have children build an ABAB or ABC chain from two or three colours and say the pattern aloud as they link. Pair the chain with paper snowflakes for a window, 3D paper ornaments for the tree, or a letter banner spelling the occasion above it.