General Conference with Children

General Conference  is coming up this weekend! It is a time where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints look forward to hearing from our church leaders. You can learn more about General Conference and see ways to view it here.

As I prepare for this weekend, I always have my children in mind. Each session of General Conference lasts about two hours, that can be a long time for children to sit and listen to talks. But I want my children to be able to participate and look forward to this weekend as much as I do, and sometimes making that happen takes persistence and creativity.

Many families have traditions and things they do with their children to help them be involved with General Conference. For our family, we play what my kids like to call the 'beans game.' It is a game my mother had us play as children during General Conference, and I have carried on the tradition with my own kids. I print off several of these Conference Squares from lds.org. Then I give each of my kids a cup of beans and an empty cup. They take one sheet and as they hear a word that is listed on the sheet, they get to add a bean to that square. There is no limit to how many beans they can put on a square. Sometimes after a talk, they end up with twenty or more beans in one spot! After each talk they then dump their beans into their empty cup, and at the end of each session they count up their beans. I then have a 'General Conference Store' filled with treats and prizes, where they can cash in their beans and buy what they want.

This is a super simple way we have made General Conference weekend a fun time my children look forward to. They are also learning how to listen and learn from our leaders. I love those times when a talk about a particular subject is finished, and they can tell me what they talked about because they are so excited about all the beans they got on that word! 

Here are some cute pictures of my kids during last General Conference:

Getting ready to put on their beans.

 
Hi Mom! :)

 We set them up right where everyone can see.

If you are looking for ideas for watching General Conference with your family, here are some more suggestions from around the Internet:

Lds.org has an Activites for Children page filled with lots of printables and games to do during General Conference.
Here are some more General Conference packets you can print off that have activities for older children.
Here is another site with a lot of links to different ideas and activities for General Conference.

Happy General Conference weekend!