This year I decided to do a little prep work in order to be able to listen to General Conference uninterrupted — at least as uninterrupted as possible with a four- and two-year-old in the house.  I found plenty of websites with ideas that I deemed rather excessive, but I pulled a few ideas from them that I then dummied down to my level!

This first idea turned out to be both brilliant and simple; it is a twist on the classic Conference BINGO activity. The advantage to this one is that it gives them continuous instant-gratification when they are listening — especially when you use basic pictures like these . . .

Prophet/Apostle, Jesus Christ/Lord/God/Savior/…, missionary, temple, family, Joseph Smith/First Vision/Restoration, baptism, sacrament, pray[er].

I had a big bowl full of cereal next to the board — the kind of cereal that I would never let my kids eat as a meal, e.g. cookie crisp and trix — and every time they heard one of the words on the board, they could eat one. The kids didn’t listen the entire time, but when they did they really listened. There were times when I would have sworn they weren’t listening but then they would hear one of the words and pop up to get a treat.

Another activity that worked well for both kids was this simple beading task. They just thread the beads onto the pipe-cleaners then pull them off and repeat. The pipe-cleaners were much easier for their little fingers to control and kept the beads from falling off if they were tipped over.

I found these dot-painting pages for the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, but I didn’t have any do-a-dot markers. Instead, I found some small round stickers for them to put in the circles. It was great because the fine-motor skills required to get them in the circles made it take a lot longer than just dabbing a marker.

Raine spent a lot more time on these than Carter did, but that was expected!

Another activity that I came up with based on some online ideas and then simplified to use things I already had around the house was this sorting / flower making game. They started by sorting the pipe-cleaners by color into the corresponding cup. After doing that a couple times, they used foam flower stickers to make the pipe-cleaners into flowers (this was where we lost Carter, but Raine spent a lot of time working on these).

I also made a couple new folder games. I taped paper clips to the back of the main papers before gluing them to the folder so that the magnets on the smaller pieces would stick — it worked great!

Then there were the toys that I pulled out of the back of my closet — the ones that I bought during the after-Christmas sales. Everyone loved the Imaginets. It has an assortment of magnetic blocks that you use to make the figure on your card. This one kept them busy during multiple sessions.

The four new Thomas the Train puzzles got plenty of use as well.

In the end, all my preparations paid off. Raine sat through all four sessions of conference and said she loved it. Carter sat through most of them and would go play with his blocks or animals in the other room when he needed a change of pace. Daddy and I were able to listen to and enjoy conference without nagging, shushing, or banishing anyone!