General Conference

I love General Conference time.  If you are unfamiliar with this time term, it is LDS lingo referring to a semi-annual event where the entire membership of the LDS church tunes in to hear the Prophet and Apostles speak the word of God.  It is an amazing time.  However, it is also 8 hours of church over 2 days and I think we all know what that means for young kids - even at home.  I've prepared conference packets for the kids in the past but these 20 pages only take about 4 minutes to get through before they're bored.  After extensive research on Pinterest and Sugardoodle I decided to make conference bags.

You can't really tell in but there are 15 bags, one for each member of the 1st Presidency and each apostle.  Inside the bag was an activity or treat.

Here they are anxiously waiting for conference to start so they can open a bag!  I love that they are excited for conference.  I like to think we are making memories and instilling a love of conference when they are young that will only grow and mature as they do.

Some of the things I put in the bags:
A foam craft kit
Cracker Jacks
Bubble gum
Mr. Potato Head printables
Play Doh
Watercolors and paper
General Authority activity from this conference packet
Starbursts
Puzzles
Blocks
Fruit Loops for stringing
General Conference Bingo
Workbooks
Suckers

So what you really want to know: Did it work?  yes and no.
They stayed in the general area for all of conference.  They were excited to get a new bag each time an apostle got up to speak.  It was definitely a better long term solution than the packets alone.  However, they were not quiet or totally reverent.  They weren't really listening because they were busy with their craft or candy.  Would I do it again? Definitely.  They aren't really quiet or reverent or listening without the bags.  I do think we'd open the proper bag before the apostle got up to speak because I spent the first part of each talk getting them settled with their new activity.
Still, I'm pretty excited to have a new approach to work the kinks out of and make work for our family.