A Few Ideas to Share

I loved General Conference this weekend. It was our first Conference experience with three children, and surprisingly it was one of our most peaceful Conference experiences since having children. The biggest difference, besides throwing Darren into the mix of course, was that I was really prepared this time. I wanted Adriana and Miriam to participate and appreciate what Conference was about, but most of all I wanted to be able to pay attention without a lot of interruptions and get a lot out of Conference myself. I'm always open to new ideas that work for other families with small children, but here are a few of the things that we did.

We continued our tradition of the "Conference tent." The Friend had the idea of doing a tent about a year and a half ago, and we've done one ever since. The idea is that the children can be in a tent and listen to the prophet, similar to when the Nephites set up their tents as families and listened to King Benjamin teach them. In order to be allowed in the Conference tent, you have to be reverent and listen to Conference. This usually works for about half of one talk in the first session, with the kids revisiting the tent a few times over the course of Conference.

In addition to the Conference tent, I came prepared with different activities (i.e. coloring pages, dot-to-dots, finger puppets, mazes, etc.) from sugardoodle.net, scriptures4kids.com, friend.lds.org, and the Deseret News (thanks, Grandpa!). Sugardoodle had a packet specifically for Nursery children this year that I really liked. The trick was to not give them all to the kids at once, but parcel them out and combine them with different activities.

We played several rounds of Conference Bingo, using Smartees as playing pieces. Smartees were really nice because candy is really motivating to my girls, they weren't messy like chocolate chips, and I could reuse the boards (which I couldn't do if we had used stickers). Miriam didn't really understand the waiting portion of the game, but I made sure that her board matched Adriana's so she could copy what her big sister did. We also had a page with pictures of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, with two pieces of candy next to each picture. When Adriana and Miriam recognized one of them speaking (and said their name back to me), they could eat their piece of candy by that General Authority.

The biggest hit of General Conference this year, though, was using "snack bowls." Before Conference I had Adriana help me look through old Ensign magazines, and she picked pictures representing things she thought they would talk about during Conference. She cut them out and then we taped the pictures to different bowls. Adriana and Miriam helped me come up with ideas for fun snacks, and then we put a different snack in each bowl. The girls were the most excited about the Chex muddy buddies we had made for Conference, so I put those in the bowl with a picture of the Savior since I knew that they would hear about Jesus a lot during Conference. Some of our other pictures were a temple, a family praying, President Monson, the sacrament, scriptures, etc. Each bowl had a different snack in them, and every time the girls heard a speaker mention that topic, they got to choose two or three of that snack. We varied the snacks during different sessions, but in addition to the muddy buddies we also had popcorn, dry cereal, marshmallows, raisins, cut up pieces of nectarine, fruit snacks, and even pomegranate seeds. I was surprised at how well the girls, especially Adriana, really listened to Conference, and how long that kept their attention. They would get so excited when they heard one of their target words, and then Adriana would take that bowl and walk around the room giving everyone in the family that snack. Adriana actually listened to all of the sessions of Conference, even when I gave her the option of going and playing in her room. At bedtime on Saturday, though, Adriana said that she hoped they wouldn't talk about Jesus quite so often on Sunday because she had a tummy ache from eating so many muddy buddies. We changed that bowl to pomegranate seeds today. :)

I know it probably sounds like a lot of work, but to me it was worth it. We still had some instances where the girls (mostly Miriam) needed to be reminded to be reverent if they were going to stay in the living room, and certainly the most peaceful Conference session was Sunday afternoon when Miriam slept thorugh the entire thing, but all in all I thought it was a successful experience. What things have worked for your family?

For anyone who has actually made it this far in a long post without fun pictures, I wanted to share another idea we have recently implemented in our family. I really appreciated President Uchtdorf's talk yesterday about simplifying. Life in the Sawyer household has gotten really busy lately. I've been surprised at how time-consuming having a child in elementary school would be for me. Between multiple walks to and from the school each day, staying on top of homework, keeping track of show and tell themes and color days and class donations and volunteering and Fall Festival and color days and book orders, I've had to be a lot more organized than usual to stay on top of everything. I know that there are a lot of moms who are busier than I am, but since September there's also been preschool (which I teach every four weeks) and piano lessons and two busy Church callings and service and Scripture Mastery and grocery shopping and planning and being the registrar for a handbell all day workshop next week and trying to fit in Darren's eating and napping schedules....and well, just life.

In one of the classes I attended during Education Week, the teacher talked about the importance of holding family councils and their role in staying organized. She recommended holding family councils every Sunday, to prepare for the upcoming week. Each family council has three parts: 1) Executive Planning, 2) Family Calendar, and 3) Child Interviews.

The Executive Planning portion is just me and Kendall. We look over the upcoming week on the calendar and talk about what we have scheduled. There are times we've forgotten to mention to the other person things we had scheduled, and sometimes that involves negotiating things that one of us wants to do that might interfere with what the other person had planned.

After we have gone over the calendar together, we call everyone for family council. I like to begin with a prayer, and then we go over the things that are on the calendar for the upcoming week. We make sure we go around the room so everyone can add items they want included on the calendar. It has helped when Adriana and Miriam are given a heads up of what to expect during the week. I even include things on the calendar such as the show and tell theme on Thursday so we don't forget, or color days for kindergarten, where preschool is that day, piano lessons, dr.'s appointment, handbell rehearsals, when the home teachers are coming, my Church meetings or book club, and even when an assignment or project is due for school. Adriana has figured out to watch for a day that doesn't have a lot of things scheduled, and then ask if she can schedule a play date then. I like that everyone has a voice during the family calendar portion of family council.

The last part of family council is the child interviews. Going youngest to oldest, Kendall and I have a one-on-one "interview" with each of our children (well, we've established that a child needs to be able to talk before they get to do interviews with Mom and Dad). Our children are still quite young, but I'm hoping that if we establish this tradition now that when our kids are teenagers they will feel comfortable talking with us. During interviews each child has our undivided attention, and she can talk about whatever she wants. We usually ask some questions like if there's anything she's worried or sad about, how does she like school, what is she excited about in the coming week, etc., but mostly we just listen. Sometimes the girls are silly and we certainly don't always have deep meaningful conversations with a three-year-old, but it was during an interview that Adriana admitted that she was nervous about starting kindergarten, or that some of the kids in her class had been mean to her. We always end the interviews with a big hug and expressing our love for that child.

Those ideas may not work for every family, but they've been good for us. We are still far from perfect, but I wanted to share some things our family has done recently to work toward having a more organized, peaceful home.