General Conference with Many Small Children

Every 6 months everyone in our faith gathers to hear the men and women leaders of our church talk of Jesus Christ, faith, prayer, hope, healing, and much more. This general conference as we call it, is a special time that we are able to receive personal revelation from our loving Heavenly Father. If you’d like to hear words of Christ, hope, and healing this weekend, you can do so here! Unfortunately, it can sometimes be hard to listen and focus with lots of small children. Here is what has failed with our family and what currently works!

Some families do well to have the kids play somewhere else and the parents just listen. We’ve tried this but wanted this to be a family affair and have our children also hear the words of God. Other families like to have small containers filled with snacks or treats labeled with words likely to be used a lot and have the children take one when they hear that key word. My children just ate said treats without waiting to hear the specific words. In an attempt to help my children sit quietly and listen, I even gave them the large jaw breakers! My reasoning being if their mouths and hands were busy, they’d naturally sit quietly. Unfortunately, they were still noisy and crazy but their mouth would hurt as well. And then I found our new system!

We set up 8 different stations, you could easily do less but this works well with our large family! Every 15 minutes we rotate stations, giving everyone an opportunity to visit each station during each 2 hour block. (There are four 2 hour blocks over the course of the weekend)

A year ago when I started this I made a list of any activity I could think of, then chose 8 from there. Each time I ask the boys what their favorites are and I make sure to keep those and mix up the others! Here’s what I have thus far.

• Coloring/activity book
• Playdough
• Lego building
• Puzzles
• Fruitloop necklaces
• Snuggle with Mom/Dad with a small treat
• Building towers with plastic cups
• Sit and have a sucker
• Geoboards
• Bead bracelet making
• Drawing with rice
• Magnet play
• Apostle memory game
• Conference bingo

After choosing the activities, I designate a space for each and collect the supplies. This go around I have:

1. Apostle matching cards. On the the table
2. Tower building with plastic cups. On the table
3. Puzzles, our favorite found here. On the table
4. Sucker on the bean bag chair
5. Geoboard with task cards found here. On the couch
6. Table top coloring sheet found here. On the floor
7. Word search/crossword. On the couch
8. Snuggle with Mom/Dad and a small treat. On the loveseat

It’s important to me that we are all together and within eye sight and ear shot of conference so I chose for all of us to be in the kitchen/great room area. I hope this helps someone. Since we’ve started doing this my kids are so excited for general conference! And instead of being overwhelmed and angry because I can’t pay attention, I’m more at peace and actually enjoy the weekend!