General Conference is a twice-annual event that is very important to me. The opportunity to hear living prophets and apostles speak the word of the Lord is a special blessing, and I am grateful for it. I want my children to recognize what a blessing General Conference is, so we do a number of things to prepare our family for it.
Recognizing the Apostles
We have had a lot of success teaching our children the names of the First Presidency and Apostles by singing their last names to the tune of “10 Little Indians”. Monson, Eyring, Uchtdorf, Packer, Perry…etc. All of my children (age 10, 7, and 5 know the song well now). The next step is to match the right name with the right person. This month I ordered the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles picture set available from store.lds.org. We can use the 8×10 photos in many ways for many years!
FHE before Conference
Our FHE the week before conference is always focused on conference preparation. Here is our plan for tonight:
1) Using our new picture packet, review the names and faces of the prophet and apostles. Can we put them in the correct order?
2) Review the importance of General Conference by discussing the following quotes from Elder Hales.
“To the young members of the Church, I promise that if you will listen, you will feel the Spirit well up within you. The Lord will tell you what He wants you to do with your life.”
“Wherever we are in this world…I testify that we are gathered at His conference.”
“In conferences we can receive the word of the Lord meant just for us…This is possible because the Holy Ghost carries the word of the Lord unto our hearts in terms we can understand.”
We will hang these printable posters from the Red Headed Hostess on our wall and keep them up all week.
3)Plan for General Conference weekend: There are tons of resources available online to help keep children occupied during General Conference (sometimes it is a little overwhelming). We have done many activity packets and coloring in the past, but this year I want to find out what they are most interested in doing, so we aren’t scrambling at the last minute. We will pick our favorites from the ideas below.
Remove the poster from the most recent conference Ensign. Hang it on the wall, and then the children get to put a sticker on the picture of whoever is speaking.
My children have always enjoyed coloring the General Authority ties. I can’t find the link on Sugardoodle anymore, but I did find a version here or here.
I picked up a post-it-note pad for each person in our family. I will hang the pictures on the wall, and we can use the post-it-notes to jot down key topics and quotes and hang them on the wall. For my beginning readers and spellers, I printed and laminated these headband cards to use as reference cards.
One of our family goals this year has been to memorize scriptures (almost weekly). We can also use the post-it-notes to quickly record scriptures that are mentioned. We will also listen close to see if our scripture of the year is quoted.
As usual there are a number of packets and great ideas available on Sugardoodle.
We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ has a fabulous list of ideas and resources. We have had success with the concept of reverence stations in the past.
This time around I would like to try Smash Booklets. The children will have the freedom to write and draw and decorate their pages as they please.
And since it is Easter weekend, it would be fun to combine Easter eggs and apostles.
This Conference I Spy worksheet would be fun, along with homemade spy glasses made from toilet paper rolls.
On the menu
General Conference at our house means crepes for breakfast on Saturday, and cinnamon rolls on Sunday! Yummy!
What General Conference plans and traditions do you have?