General Conference Activities to Keep Kids Engaged and Busy
With the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints approaching in a few weeks, I wanted to take a moment to share some of my favorite finds as well as a couple creations of my own. For those of you who don’t know, the Church puts on a conference every 6 months where we hear from the Lord’s current prophet and apostles. They share messages with the world that they feel we need to hear at this time, with the main focus being our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is one of my favorite weekends of the year. We spend so much time together as a family and we feel uplifted by the messages shared. I leave every conference with a desire to improve and be better. All of that being said, I make it my mission to keep plenty of entertainment for my littles. They aren’t really old enough to be expected to sit and listen for the whole conference, as the total comes to about 10 hours of speaking/music. But I do prefer them to sit in the room and watch with us. In my mind, it builds a tradition and an expectation. And I think it is good practice for the day that we do expect them to sit and listen with us. I also believe that they do absorb what they hear, even if they are coloring or playing at the time they hear it. So without further adieu, here are the gems I have discovered in my search to keep my kids entertained and to have them participate.
I love Kari’s website. She has so many good things and is very talented at designing printables that look so fun. I invite you to look around her website for other things that might work for you, but here are the ones that we have used and loved:
- General Conference Book for Littles
- On this same page is a link to print a book for older kids. The one for littles has more coloring pages and age appropriate things that they can listen for during conference. The older version has spaces to write notes and quotes from the talks.
- Adult Coloring Pages
- Okay, maybe this one was for me. Sometimes I focus better when I am doing other things (like coloring). And the kids were wanting me to color at the table with them while they colored. It helped them stay at the table longer knowing that we were doing something together.
- Giant Coloring Poster
- On her webpage she explains how you can take it to staples and have them print it as a blueprint file! I did this for our last conference and it was about $4 per poster. These make great ministering gifts if your ministering sister has kids! We just left it out on the table for all sessions and the kids popped over and worked on it when they wanted to.
We have never done the conference store. I think the idea is just a tad bit too mature for my kids, but I look forward to the day that we can do it! This website has a free printable for the conference cash and price signs. You can set up a store with snacks and small prizes for your kids to earn by listening and answering questions after.
Here are some church resources from their website that we have tried and found helpful for us.
This is basically the conference version of bingo. It is a great way to encourage the kids to listen to the talks and try to get something out of them, even if they are young. They can listen for the words to be said. The squares also have pictures on them in case your child isn’t reading just yet.
More for older kids, but these are color by number pages. Rather than matching a color to a number though, they have matched words to the numbers. So when you hear a specific word, you can color in that number on the pages. If your child is younger, the church also has plenty of basic, church themed coloring pages on their site.
Here are some ideas that one of my friends compiled from her General Conference experience:
- Build a tent to watch conference from- You could draw parallels to the Book of Mormon prophet, King Benjamin. People gathered in their tents with their families to hear the word of the Lord. You could build with blankets and chairs or nuggets if you have them!
- Family activity– Come up with something the whole family can work on together to create while sitting and listening. Print a giant coloring page (see instructions to do this cheap in the giant coloring poster suggestion above), lego temple, giant rice crispy temple, graham cracker temple, puzzle, or a big paint by number!
Now onto the things that I have created…
We used this as a recognition game. When an apostle would get up to speak, we would tell the kids to find that person and color them. By the end of conference, all of the apostles and the prophet would be colored. The designs here were pulled from the church website where you can print each of these pictures individually and take notes on the back if your kids would prefer that. If you like the banner, this could also be printed as a blueprint at staples for ~$4.
Printable cut outs of different temples around the world. we put some construction paper on the back of ours and laminated them. You can always use the Family Home Evening before to prep for conference and do these little prep items together!
We also have a Gospel Items matching game
Look and Finds
We made these for our church busy books, but there is no reason they couldn’t be used at conference! The goal is to count the number of each person, temple, or thing on the page.
This is for sure for older kids, but so fun. It is a maze and you can move as many squares as you want in the given direction from where you move after the start point. Once you choose to stop, you change direction according to the arrow that you stop on. Your goal is to get to the x in the middle. It is pretty difficult, but a fun brain teaser!
This one isn’t church related but it has kept my kids entertained in church on many occasions, so why not link it here. There are 5 pages with different colors. Then there are many items to cut out that are those colors. Kids can cut out the items and place them on the correct color page. Ex: Grapes go on purple, stop sign on red…
General Conference Trail Mix Game
Pretty self explanatory! When you hear a word said that is on the page, you grab from a community bowl and put the food into a bag. Or just eat them as you hear them!
Song bags
Finally, this is the last conference idea that we utilize every conference. There are usually about 4 songs in each session. You wont need an activity for the last session, so you only need 3 bags per session. In each brown paper bag, you will put different activities. Here are some examples of things I have put in ours:
- Playdough
- coloring pages
- Water beads
- Bracelet making kit
- Kinetic sand
- Legos
- fruit loops and string to make a necklace
- stickers
- puzzles
- washi tape
- pipe cleaners
- tangrams
- Or just check your local dollar tree!
So they get to open a bag after every song. The newness of each item will hopefully keep them entertained until you get to the next song!
Hopefully you can utilize some of these and be able to hear more of this upcoming conference!
