Monday Mom-blings

I love conference weekend.

I think I said that on my last post...but it's the truth.

I love everything about conference weekend...family activities, church in my pj's, Sunday morning breakfast, conference talks...everything!

This past weekend was no different. In fact, in some ways I think it was better. We had our same traditions, but this year we also did a couple of different things. I tried a couple of the ideas I posted about a few weeks ago (from the Ensign) to help the kiddies listen through conference, and they worked pretty well. Rylen has a hard time just sitting still and listening at church, so I didn't expect a lot from him, but even he tried to pay attention for one of the games. (It involved candy of course...but I'm not above bribery!) One of our key candy words for the second session just happened to be "temple." The kids definitely hit the jackpot on that word through Elder Bednar's talk and then the next speaker too. They were poppin' gummy bears left and right. My sister was keeping track of the number of times the key words were said, and according to her, Elder Bednar mentioned the word "temple" 61 times...that's a lot of gummy bears for one talk! (Thankfully, I don't think the kids caught all 61 times!)

The workbooks also worked well for the older kids. Ashlynn and Breven enjoyed doing the word search, and I think the space for them to write in 3 things that they learned and make up a question helped them pay better attention. It will be fun to have our little Conference Trivia FHE tonight and see what questions everyone comes up with. I know Jackson is trying to come up with the most obscure questions that he possibly can. He mentioned one yesterday..."What color was the choir director's (Mack Wilberg) tie?" Huh? Who pays attention to something like that? Guess I'll have to pay better attention next time! FHE should be fun!

What did I enjoy the most? I think there were too many good talks to rank them...or even remember them all. I'm looking forward to the next Ensign so that I can read them again. I did really love Elder Hales talk though. (First one out of the box in the Saturday morning session.) I had just been on a little spending spree for Easter and then I heard his talk about debt and distinguishing wants from needs...needless to say, I might be returning a few things. I loved what he said his wife taught him about wants and needs. The 4 little words (just behind, I love you) that mean the most..."We can't afford it" and looking at the things that you want to buy and asking yourself why you want to buy them...to make the person you're buying them for happy, to make yourself happy, to prove you can buy it, to have a status symbol, etc. Loved the talk! For me, I think the pervading message was that there will be tough times ahead, do what you can to prepare and get out of debt, help others, have faith, trust in the Lord, and the most important things in life are not material...they are your family and your faith/testimony.

How was your conference weekend? What did you learn? Enlighten me!

Note

It was brought to my attention again today that there continues to be some problems printing out the conference journals/workbooks. I've gone into Scribd to try to figure out what is wrong and this is what I have found...

The document was made in landscape page format, however, it seems to default print in portrait format. Obviously this will cut off half of the page. So, if this is the problem you're encountering here's the solution: Whether you're printing the document directly from my blog page or going into Scribd, simply go to the document, click on the "More" button at the top of the document, Click print. When it goes into the printer selection, click "Preferences." Then there are a bunch of things to choose from: Paper Quality, Effects, Finishing, Basics, Color. Choose "Basics." This will allow you to change the page orientation. Change the orientation to "Landscape" and hit okay. Then click print and everything should be okie dokie! (I hope)

FYI...here's the next installment:  Conference Journal Older Kids

Conference Journal - Older Child

   Publish at Scribd or explore others:            Magazines & Newspape              Books              Fiction                  kids              Workbook      

Let me know if you've had any other problems and I'll try to solve them for you! Thanks for being patient!

Tuesday Tip

Just a quick post today...
I realized that conference is coming up pretty quick and I still hadn't finished the workbook/journal for the older kids that I had planned on doing. So, here it is. I made this workbook specifically for my older kiddos. (The link for the workbook for younger children is on my right sidebar under quiet books.) I think it's got enough of a combination of "fun stuff" vs. "learning stuff" to keep them occupied for at least 1 session of conference. FYI: I also designed this little workbook/journal to coincide with one of my favorite ideas from the article in the Mar. Ensign about preparing children for general conference. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my favorite ideas out of the article was to have each of the kids think of 3 (or however many you want) questions as they watched conference and then make a game of it the next night for FHE...who was paying the best attention??? The questions could be anything from, "What color tie was Pres. Monson wearing?" to "Who spoke about temples in the Sunday morning session?" I know my big kids would get a kick out of this...but I think that even my little ones would too. So...with that in mind, in this workbook the kids have to write down 3 things they heard in each talk and then come up with a question at the end of the talk.

Conference Journal - Older Child

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Newspapers kids Workbook

Tuesday

Wow...today has been a busy day. It's almost dinner time and I'm just now getting to this post. Better late than never I suppose!

Well, once again I don't really have a great tutorial for you, but I've been working on a conference worksheet/journal for younger children since conference is coming up so I thought I would share it with you. One of my previous posts talked about some of the ideas mentioned in the Mar.2009 Ensign to prepare children for conference. I really liked the idea of having each of the children come up with questions for a family night conference quiz on the Monday after conference, but I didn't know if that would be possible with a 3 year old. I tried to design this little workbook so that it would entertain my 3 year old but also so that, given a little direction I could help him come up with 3 questions about things he remembered for conference for our FHE quiz. (I'm also going to do a workbook for older kids...just check back later.) The pictures are mostly from the gospel art kit and the Friend. Hope it's useful to you...

Conference Journal - Young Child

Publish at Scribd or explore others: kids Workbook

Word of Warning: I didn't really do a great proof-read job on it so hopefully there are no major mistakes. Let me know if you find any and I'll fix them and then re-post it. Again this can be downloaded through Scribd. Sorry for the inconvenience but I'm not super computer literate and this is the easiest and most convenient way for me to do this at this time and registering is free so it's not too big of a deal!

Monday Mombles

So, I just read an article in the March 2009 Ensign that had to do with preparing your children for general conference. I love conference. I love staying home and watching conference in my pj's. I love having our family over for our traditional Sunday morning conference breakfast, but more often than not our conference morning turns into a chorus of: "Do I have to watch the whole thing?" or "move over, you're in my space," or "stop hitting me" or "he took my marker." Does this sound familiar?

Anyway, I loved some of the ideas that were in the ensign and I think that I'll try to incorporate some of them into our conference viewing. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites:
1. Put a bowl of treats on the table. Designate a word to listen for (either in all of the talks or change the word for each talk.) If the kids hear the word as they listen to the talk, they can take a treat. (This would be perfect since I have a ton of left-over m&m's from bribing Rylen when he was potty-training.)
2. Conference Quiz. Have everyone in the family watch and listen to conference and come up with 3-5 questions about it (ie. Anything from "What color was Pres. Monson's tie?" to "What did Elder Bednar teach us about families?") Obviously, the younger the children, the more simple the question. The for FHE the following Monday break out your conference quiz and talk about what was learned during conference this year. (My kids would LOVE this one...and actually, my quiz questions would probably be the easy ones because they would ask ones that would try to stump everyone.)
3. Buy each child a copy of of the conference Ensign (when it comes out) and a highlighter, and discuss the talks for FHE. (Obviously this one is for after conference but I thought it was a good idea and something I might try.)

Typically we do the standard coloring page or conference activity book at our house. (I may even make my own little conference activity book while I'm messing around with photoshop...I'll post it if I do.) Most of the kids still enjoy it, but we might mix it up a little. These ideas could be kind of fun. What do you do with your kids to help them listen to and sit through conference?