General Conference

Our church gets to hear from its leaders twice a year at our General Conference.  It is always a wonderful weekend.  It is hard on the kids though because it is A LOT of sitting and listening.  I always print out plenty of coloring pages, crosswords, note taking journals etc, and of course their all time favorite: BINGO.  But I am always looking for new great ideas to keep their little minds engaged and happy.  I found this idea from one of my favorite blogs here(simple kierste).  It was a HUGE success!!  The kids loved it!!  It was also great because it really kept them listening during all the talks.  Although I think next year we may have to fill the treat buckets with carrots and celery!!  One talk they got close to 30 treats!!!

So this is how the game works.  Find some buckets around the house (I found the tin ones at the dollar section at Target), then decide on the words you want the kids to listen for during Conference-- temple, family, faith, scriptures, and love--then I added one word to the front of each bucket with stickers (or vinyl if you want).   For really little ones, you could add a picture in addition to or instead of the words.  Next: fill each bucket with the kids' favorite candy.

Then, during conference, I line the buckets up somewhere, and anytime they hear one of the words on the bucket, they can come and take a piece of candy.  What also worked even better for us is to have the children keep track by tally marks during the talk of all the words; then at the end of the talk count up the tally marks and get that number of treats from the buckets.  That way they are not getting up and down as much. Give it a try next time!  It was our favorite conference activity yet!!  I even made these for my visiting teaching families. They LOVED them.