Now, as exciting as this is to me to listen to the talks and music now as a grown up, as a child it was a dreaded 8-hours-of-church-not-fun time. So I've been giving a lot of thought to how we can make this better for our kids. We want them in the room listening as much as possible, even if it's not really sinking in. So I printed out these activity packets (thanks Emily!) and put a lot of candy in a "conference jar" for them to be rewarded with throughout the broadcasts. So what does all this have to do with a tent, you ask? Well, I'll tell you...
Yesterday morning as we were getting ready for conference, Olivia said, "Mommy, I have a great idea for general conference?" I generally get a little nervous about her "great ideas", so I took a deep breath and asked, "What's that?"
She said, "Why don't we put up a tent in the living room to watch General Conference, and pretend like we're listening to King Benjamin?" (Note: King Benjamin is a prophet/king in the Book of Mormon, and all his people came to listen to his last address and pitched their tents around to listen to him speak.) So of COURSE I have to say yes to this one. Here was my first attempt on Saturday:
As you can see, I tried to use the keyboard to hold the tent up. Not a very sturdy item, let me tell you. But the bigger problem was the girls complaining that the stand was cutting into their backs while in the tent. So here was my attempt today:
Looks better, doesn't it? I thought I was so clever because I closed the windows on a fold of the sheet and propped up the front with chairs. They loved it! Yeah... I'm a genius...
2 comments:
HOW FUN!!! That made conference an even more memorable event and wasn't it a wonderful conference. Have a great week.
Great idea...sort of like being in a darkened movie theater. Whatever works, do it! It's quite a feat to get children to get quiet and still and listen for 15 minutes, much less eight hours.
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