October General Conference

As most of my readers know, two times a year the church I belong to holds a General Conference.  It is broadcast all across the world so that all member can hear a few select of our General Authority and Auxillary Leaders speak.  You can watch at church, or right from home on the BYU channel.  In general it is a spiritually uplifting couple of hours.  But... when you have kids that can all go out the door pretty quickly!  We usually watch it at home and have gotten to the point where I say, "Guess what kids.  Conference is tomorrow."  And the reply (drumroll for this please..............), " YES!!!  We are so excited!"

Usually I try to post a little early what I have decided to do to keep the kids interested for 2 days of General Conference.  I am having a hard time posting while my hubby is gone and I am staying with my parents.  Why is that... here I am with extra help and I have a harder time posting? 

Anyways.  Conference is held on Saturday and Sunday and each day has 2 about 2 hours long sessions. We usually end up doing about the same thing.

I am sure you have seen things similar to this.  I just print off pictures from different sites that would go along with a word I know will be repeated several times in the talks.  Notice how Jesus has a plethora of tiny grapes?  I actually had to fill this one a couple of times!  Temple and family both have a few more fun treats but this year I wanted to add some sort of twist.  something new...  enter the paper bags!

Since we are with my parents watching this year I knew my dad would have some sort of spectacular lunch for in between sessions and I wanted my kiddos to actually eat it.  So instead of doing treats for both sessions each day.  We did beads for the first session, then ate lunch, then did the treats for the second session.  It's pretty much the same concept as the treats.  I taped the words to the front of the piano and when they heard one of the words they could put a bead on a pipe cleaner to make bracelets.

Even Grandpa and the baby got into the beads!  But apperantly that wasn't enough of a difference for me!  So I had to add one more twist.  I was a little worried they would get tired of the beads (which they didn't) so I added something to help create a silent distraction.

I created 10 paper bags with little prizes inside each one.  Each time a new speaker came up to the pulpit the kids got to choose a new bag.   Some of the prizes were:

Fruit Snacks

Reisens (Yum...)

Little Juice Boxes

Printed Conference Packets

99 cent Halloween Color Books

Paper Bag Puppet Supplies

Bingo Cards

Tiny Pumpkin Decorating

$4 Halloween Ornament Kit from Wal-Mart

Fancy Crayons (I LOVE these!)

The bags lasted for a whole day (or 2 sessions) of Conference. 

All prizes were pretty cheap, but some were to big for the bags.  For those things I would put the larger pieces hidden on the top of the piano.  Then I would put the smaller pieces of the kit inside the bag.  For Example....  

 for the Tiny Pumpkins I put the permanent marks in the bag and handed them a pumpkin when they opened the bag. 

All the kids took turns opening bags.  My only rule was that they couldn't open a bag when the prophet spoke.  While they always do a great job listening with all of these activities.  I wanted them to simply sit and listen to his words at the end of each session.  They seemed fine with doing that and never complained.

Her is a picture of the after math of conference.  Perhaps this is a bit much to do, but...  My kids get soooo excited when I mention to them that it is time for conference and they always mention things they heard in talks!  I get to listen and they get to have fun.  Everyone wins!