Countdown Board For Kids

When your kids are excited about a special event, how many times a day do you get asked “How much longer”? Why not make this fun countdown board to help the kids keep track of how many more days they have to wait before their special day arrives!

Do your kids love Spirit Riding Free? My six year old is so obsessed! In fact, when she’s not watching it on TV, she’s playing with her Spirit toys in her room!

When she found out that season 6 of Spirit Riding Free was coming to Netflix, she did a happy dance around the room and we immediately started counting down the days until August 17th!

Spirit Riding Free

My little Keira already loves horses so this show is about a 12 year old city girl named Lucky is right up her alley. Lucky moves to a small Texas town and bonds with a wild mustang named, you guessed it, Spirit. Lucky also becomes friends with Pru and Abigail and the show follows them (and their horses) on their adventures. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a sneak peek…

The great thing about Spirit Riding Free is that it teaches Keira that girls can be strong and should never be afraid to try new things. Lucky is a great role model and it’s the kind of character that I encourage my girls to identify with. I’m happy that this is the kind of show Keira chooses to watch and really enjoy bonding with her while we spend some mommy-daughter time watching it together!

Since she was asking multiple times a day how many more days she had to wait, I came up with a plan. Why not make a countdown board? It would be a fun way for her to keep track and save me from having to answer the same question a gazillion times a day!

We went out for supplies and swung by Walmart to get stocked up Pop Secret Homestyle Popcorn. Keira and I have to have a little popcorn when we snuggle up on the couch to enjoy our shows. We chose the biggest box we could find, family size, to be sure we wouldn’t run out for awhile. It makes celebrating the simple joys of life with my family that much more fun (and the awesome butter taste doesn’t hurt either)!

Countdown Board For Kids

What you’ll need:

Supplies:

• Wooden board
• Fabric (large enough to cover wooden board)
• Small chalkboard
• Mod Podge
• Acrylic paint
• 3/4″ Wooden craft letters
• 3/4″ Wooden craft numbers
• (20) 1 1/2″ Wooden craft circles (these already have the holes drilled in them)
• (6) #212 Screw eyes
• (4) 3/4″ S-hooks
• Ribbon or rope for hanging on wall

Tools:

• Paint brushes
• Scissors
• Glue Gun & Glue sticks

Start with a wooden board. I bought mine in a pack of three at the craft store but you can use any size or shape you like. Coat the top with Mod Podge.

Spread the fabric over the top of the wood and smooth it out. Walmart has a bunch of different fabric squares in the fabric section so you could pick one up while you’re getting your Pop Secret. If you buy the squares, they’ll have creases from the fold but they disappear once you smooth the fabric over the wood.

If you have a lot of fabric, you may want to trim it once you glue the top part. I did this to make it easier to fold over. Next, spread glue over the sides and back of the board and glue the remaining fabric down. Once the fabric was set in place, I added one more layer of Mod Podge over the top of the fabric, just to keep it in place. Let dry.

While the board dried, I worked on the other parts of the board. I’d had trouble finding just the right mini chalkboard to show what we were counting down. When you’re crafting, you have to improvise a lot so I ended up settling on this chalkboard with easel.

The legs on the back were attached with glue so I pulled them off. I was a little worried I’d damage the board but they came off pretty easily.

It was time to start painting. I started with the letters and numbers first, using teal and pink acrylic paint.

I painted the frame of the chalkboard purple and the wooden circles pink.

Once the circles were dry, I glued the numbers to the front.

I’d also picked up a couple of wooden flowers…I thought they might look nice on the ends. I painted them pink, then painted a purple circle in the center.

If your board is relatively thick, you can screw the screw eyes directly into the wood. This board was on the thin side though and even though they were small, I was worried the eyes might make the wood crack or split. I chose to just hot glue them onto the back of the board instead. (They look like they’re at the top in this picture but remember that you want them on the bottom…this is where you’ll hang the chalkboard).

Add two more screw eyes to the top of the chalkboard and two to the bottom (on the back).

Now “paint” glue on the back of the letters and flowers, then attach them to the board.

Finally, measure out a piece of ribbon or rope to hang your countdown board with. Glue it to the back with hot glue. I glued the bottom of the ribbon to the board then added more hot glue on top, just to make sure it held firm.

Once the glue dries, attach the chalkboard and the numbers with the s hooks. Now you’re ready to hang your countdown board!

This was so much fun to make, especially since I stopped for a snack break along the way!

Once our countdown board was finished, Keira could stop asking how many days were left…all she had to do was check her board. The great part is now that the new season of Spirit Riding Free has started, we can use it to countdown other special events.

For the next couple weeks we’ll be counting down to our family vacation in Fiji. The girls have already told me that when we get back, they want to start counting down until Halloween! Then it’ll be Christmas…the biggest countdown of all!

What special event would your family use this to count down to?

This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® and Snyder’s-Lance Inc, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #Pop4Spirit  https://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV