Do you remember gum wrapper chains? They were all the rage when I was in fifth grade. I thought about those chains the other day as I noticed that our large pack of gum didn’t have printed wrappers. I wanted to show my kids how to make gum wrapper chains, but it was hard to find gum with wrappers. Our drugstore had lots of cube shaped gum, and tiny rectangles of gum, but very few long pieces of gum, and most of those don’t have individual wrappers anymore. I’m sure it’s cheaper to produce gum with no wrappers, and probably more environmentally friendly – and it does explain why none of my children had heard of gum wrapper chains.
The good news is that you can make the chains with any kind of solid or patterned paper. Thin papers work better than heavy weight paper, because of all the folding. Magazine pages, origami, or thin scrapbook paper, or even notebook paper work well. This is a great way to use up scraps of paper that are too small for other projects.
Start with a 1” x 2 ½” piece of paper. Fold it in half lengthwise, then unfold so that the crease shows. Now fold each side into the middle crease. Then fold the paper in half again, on that same crease line. You should have a long skinny rectangle. Fold it in half from the top of the skinny rectangle to the bottom. Then fold the ends in to the middle. This makes one of the links for the chain. Once you make a couple you can began to link them together. The prongs of one link go through the slots of another. Keep going in a zigzag pattern.
Here’s a picture of the steps:
This is a great project for older elementary children and up. The folding and linking is not hard, but it takes fine motor coordination that many younger children don’t have.
Also See:
Easy Paper Dolls and Paper Shapes
How to Make Tiny Magnetic Folders