MY KIDS WATCHED CONFERENCE!!!!

Well, the first session anyway.

In last months Ensign there was an article with suggestions for involving your children in conference. I loved how one parent talked about how they never forced or expected their children to watch conference. But as parents, they never missed one and that set a great example of how important conference was to them for thier kids. These parents did use insentives (sometimes known as bribes) to help encourage thier kids to sit and listen, even on saturday. They had some great suggestions and I love how they never forced thier children to sit with them, but lead by example.

Since my kids are still pretty little, only a few of the suggestions apply to our family now and they worked great! The other suggestions are things my husband and I have discussed and have come up with a plan for the future ( things like going out for lunch and dinner between conferences to talk about what was learne, only those who participated will be invited to go).

Here's what we did today!

First, for Rylee I printed out a conference packet which you can find HERE and she really loved it. For Cole, I found some coloring pages. I put both inside some fun folders (hello kitty for Rylee and spider man for Cole). These were helpful but did not keep their attention the entire time.

Second, I printed out a bingo game that my bishop had e-mailed to me in another awesome packet (let me know if you want it and I'll send it to you). There are both words and pictures so the kids can listen for words to be said and win a prize. The prize my kids won is they get a dollar to take to the dollar store later this evening.

Lastly, my kids favorite and the most effective game was "Magic Word." For each speaker I gave my kids one (or two) magic words to listen for. Everytime they heard that word, they got a piece of candy (jelly beans in this case). They loved this game. They had no interest in leaving the room and they are even looking forward to the next session.

Don't get me wrong, I still had to remind them occassionally to be quiet or reverent so mommy and daddy could listen, often followed with the threat of dismissing them from the room. But mostly I encouraged them to listen for the magic word. It was amazing how much they listen when you think they don't! They got nearly every word, even Cole! I thought this game might have been a little more difficult for him, but he was on top of it!

I know I'm posting this early, but I thought maybe this could be helpful to others with small children. Enjoy conference!