General Conference Fun

This year I wanted to try to get Jackson more involved in General Conference*, as well as keep him entertained. I took an idea from a friend and decided to make him this treasure chest filled with goodies. In side the box are brown paper sacks that have a picture of one of the 12 Apostles or one of the First Presidency attached to them. Jackson's job was to watch for when a new speaker came up and he had to try to find their picture in the box. I thought he might be too young for it, but he definitely was not, he LOVED it. He didn't always get the picture right and we had to give him a choice between just a few bags instead of all them at the beginning.

Inside the bags are little things to do during the talks or little treats to have. It wasn't difficult to put together, it did take a little forethought though to come up with 15 things to do, but most of them are pretty simple. I did buy him a few new things, I found this lego man on clearance for just a few dollars at Walmart. I put this in the bag to signify that we were supposed to build blocks together during the talk. I also made some of those velcro quiet books and put the pieces inside the bags and when he pulled out one of those I just brought him the file folder that went with it.

I was actually surprised how much he liked these velcro games & although they were pretty time consuming to make they were definitely worth it. Most of the other bags were pretty simple. In one I had a juice box, not something he gets pretty much ever, so he was really excited about that one. Another had some cookies to share and another had a jello box in it. I kept the jello in the fridge and got it out when he found this bag.


He had a lot of fun finding the bags and this morning asked if we could watch conference again. Ha ha ha! He only can remember President Monson's name & photo typically, but it definitely got him familiar with some of the other names. He had a good time trying to say President Uchtdorf and ran around all day saying President Packer--not sure why he liked that name so well. I even had a few other ideas of things to do incase he got bored, but he never did. It may have helped that he slept through at least half of the second session each day. =) I had also planned to set up his tent and watch conference from inside the tent and I had some conference coloring pages printed out as well, but we never needed to use them. I guess I'll just save those for October.

*For anyone who may not be LDS reading this post General Conference happens twice a year, once in April and once in October. During this time the leaders of our church speak to us. Their sermons are broadcast all over the world so that members of our church can watch them and hear their messages. You can learn more about it here.