This General Conference activity is a simple idea with great results! Children will learn to recognize prophets, apostles, and other church leader’s faces and names and will be excited to watch General Conference!
My husband and I have always wanted to make watching General Conference a priority in our home. Something that our whole family looks forward to twice a year. However with little kids (or bigger kids) this can be quite tricky.
Sitting through two hours of speakers, four separate times, in the course of two days can be quite overwhelming and especially tedious for children. It’s not their typical definition of fun.
But it’s SOOOOOOOO important to plant the seeds of good habits early. So we have tried to figure out ways to help our boys be somewhat engaged and excited for General Conference.
Establishing Traditions
Throughout the years, we have created several fun General Conference traditions that our boys look forward to twice a year. One activity in particular has done wonders in keeping them involved and excited for General Conference weekend.
The General Conference activity we made up is pretty simple. I debated whether or not I should even share it with ya’ll because of it’s simplicity. But since it works for us, it might work for your littles, so I thought, why not.
General Conference Activity – Find the Speaker
*Oh look how cute and little my oldest two were!
I call the activity, “Find the Speaker”. It requires very little prep work, which I am always a fan of! To play you just need to have two things on hand:
Supplies Needed
- candy/candies of choice
- Chart of the General Authorities and Officers of the church
I grab my chart of the general authorities from the most recent Liahona Magazine. You can also download it here from the church’s website and then print it.
How to Play
Before General Conference starts, I place all of our candies in bowls high enough up from tiny little hands grabbing when they aren’t supposed to and have our sheet of general authorities in a prominent location.
With each speaker that gives a talk (we don’t include those saying prayers or conducting), our children will find and point to the speaker on the general authority sheet while reading their name (or we tell them the name if they are not yet readers). Once they have identified the speaker and said their name, they can grab a candy from the candy dishes.
To make things a bit more interesting and to help them differentiate between callings, we have certain candy that you can only get for an apostle or prophet. So the “bigger faces” on the general authority sheet.
I don’t want my kids to get overloaded with sugar but I also want to make it enough that they are excited and don’t feel jipped.
We have found that two little candies (we use jellybeans and skittles) for a speaker and another candy option (like a piece of chocolate or starburst) that is bigger for the apostle or prophet, works well. You can also just up the little candies count to 3 or 4 for an apostle or prophet.
I have them both grab a bowl for themselves to collect their candy in. They can choose to save up their candy or eat it right away if they wish.
With four sessions of speakers, the candy does add up! But it’s not too much to make them crazy (or ill!).
My oldest usually saves up most of his candy, so you can see from the picture how much he acquired over the course of two days.
Positive Results
By playing our simple General Conference Activity of “Find the Speaker”, my boys have grown familiar with the faces and names of the leaders of the church. And they want to stay in the room during the sessions because each new speaker means more candy!
I don’t know how much they are actually soaking up in the course of four sessions, but they are developing the habit of watching General Conference of their own choice.
It has been a wonderful little activity with great results!
Is there a General Conference Activity that has kept your littles engaged? Let me know in the comments below!
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