General Conference Fun

 I set up our entertainment center for General conference so that when we had some friends over for the sunday afternoon session, Erik would have plenty to do and I would maybe get to listen to some of it. This probably looks like a ton, but really his attention is not real long so I knew I needed quite a bit of things. There are so many ideas out there for fun things to do with kids for General conference at home, and I tried to make up something using bits and pieces of many ideas and made them my own with some tweaks. I knew I didnt want it centered all around food and I knew that he wouldn't sit long enough to listen real well for key words. I didn't want to make it frustrating to where he would want to give up.

 So this was my system. I looked up prior how many speakers there would be for the particular session we were going to be watching and came up with an activity for each speaker. I just numbered them and had him follow in order. I did put a small treat on each number and there was one sucker on one number in the middle. I didnt buy anything new, I just used things I had and made a few things with resources I had.

So the activities were, file folder games, stickers, playdough to put on a dot coloring page, popsicle stick puzzle, cut out pictures from church magazines and paste them on paper, wood puzzles, beading foam beads onto pipe cleaners, and matching pictures of the apostles and first presidency. I also made a sensory box for him to play with once the activity was finished or it he didnt want to do one of the activities. I didnt want to fight with him or come up with things on the spot so I didnt push these things. I just offered and let him decide. I had him help set it all up and he was chomping at the bit to get started when our friends came. The end results was overall success, some things he did longer than one talk and others he just ate the candy and then went off. The sensory box saved me and am so glad I thought to make one up real quick. You can make one out of anything. I had a bunch of rice in a plastic bin and then added small plastic containers (really small ones) and small toys and weird knick knacks and he played with that happily. In the end he got a bit of sweets but not a ton, and he was entertained while I got to mostly listen (I did have to still facilitate and help with some of these fun things).

Success!