I love watching General Conference each April and October. I love being home all weekend with my family watching conference on the tv. I love having big breakfasts and soups to eat for lunch and dinner. I love hearing our church leaders give us inspired words and guidance. The one thing I didn’t love was having my children cause such a ruckus that we couldn’t hear much of what was going on.
In April I made a General Conference Basket for the family to enjoy. It worked very well for my three and six year old kids. I took different General Conference packets I have found on the web and customized them to what I wanted. I make one for each child. There is a photo of each Prophet and Apostle and a blank head next to it so they can color what they look like when they speak. I also have a tie on the page for them to color to match the speakers tie. I have a spot for them to write or draw pictures of what they are speaking about. At the bottom there are different things they can color if it applies to the speaker, such as if they are bald, wear glasses etc. I also have pages for other speakers who are not Prophets or Apostles including pages for the women who speak. At the end of the conference packet, I include several coloring pages, word searches and other fun things from the Friend Magazine. If they finish or get tired of coloring about the speaker, they can flip to a page in the back of the packet and work on that. I bind all the pages together into a book to make it easy to flip through. The first year I printed a packet from the internet I didn’t bind it and pages were flying all over the room!
I also made Conference Bingo Cards that we all really enjoyed. There are several topics on the card including prayer, faith, temples, etc. We play by covering our entire card with pieces of candy (m&m’s, gummy bears, mini marshmallows etc) and as we hear someone discuss one of the topics, we get to eat the piece of candy on that square. The person who get’s bingo first gets to eat the remainder of their candy!
I put the packets, bingo cards, and candy in a basket along with crayons and a few other little things for the kids to do. I have found with my kids that if you make things visually appealing, for some reason they like it better. That is why I bind their books and have everything arranged nicely in the basket.
Here are my packets and bingo cards. You can download them and use them for your family. Don’t forget to add coloring pages and word searches etc to the back of the packet. You can find several of them put together online or browse through the Friend Magazines.
