Monday, September 27, 2010

Preparing for General Conference

I am very grateful that my kiddos love General Conference!  They get so excited, they have a hard time waiting.  They have always had a good attitude about Conference, so I can't take all the credit.  I have done a few things and started a few traditions to add to this special time of the year.
  • Journal - I've encouraged my children to write down every speaker's name, their topic and anything that stood out about their talks.  Younger kids draw pictures of the speaker or their topic.  Sometimes they record their notes in a their journal; other times they have a special conference book.  After conference we talk about what stuck out to us as a family and any overlying themes we noticed in conference.  We also talk about what areas we heard the leaders encourage us to work on specifically.
  • Saturday Breakfast - Our family enjoys food.  OK, that's an understatement; we really enjoy food. Any tradition that includes food, is that much better.  One of our neighbors had the tradition of donuts for breakfast on Conference Saturday.
  • Sunday Breakfast - Last Conference was also Easter, so we had our traditional Easter Breakfast.  I'm thinking Conference Sunday needs a special breakfast like Breakfast Cake or Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy.
  • Conference Bingo - During the morning sessions, we have bingo cards.  M&M's make excellent markers.  Every time we get a bingo, we eat an M&M..  We don't usually eat too many and it helps to keep our attention on the speaker.  I love these bingo cards because there are 12 different cards.  One of my kiddos tends to notice someone else eating an M&M and decides to eat one too, even if they hadn't been paying attention.  Different cards minimizes that challenge.
  • Conference Activity - We mix it up a little for the afternoon session.  Everyone gets a list of gospel subjects with a snack listed next to it.  Last year's list for Saturday included tithing - pretzels, Priesthood - Froot Loops, prophet - animal crackers, missionaries - Goldfish, Love - jelly beans, faith - popcorn.  Every time the Conference speaker mentions one of the words, we get to eat one of the snacks.  When faith is mentioned, we get one piece of popcorn.  It's really hit and miss.  One Conference there was a whole talk about love that emptied everyone's cups of M&M's!
I need to choose my topics and snacks and go grocery shopping to be ready for Saturday. 

These are the type of things that help my children look forward to General Conference.  What are your General Conference traditions?

4 comments:

Tilleea said...

I love your ideas! I am so doing the afternoon session snack cups, although I think J would just eat them all at once, but the other 2 should be able to do it.

Raejean said...

Whatever it takes to help the kiddos look forward to Conference!

Our Little Family said...

I love seeing all your ideas for Conference. I think I will have to steal a few since I haven't done a very good job of getting my kiddo's interested in Conference!!!

Annette Lyon said...

I always mean to have a cool weekend with food and stuff--and then realize conference is already HERE and I didn't do it. Whoops. I'll try harder for this weekend. Great ideas.

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