Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Getting Ready for Conference, or How to Keep Wee Ones Busy

The rain makes the days absolutely drag out here.  It's a little more complicated keeping preschoolers busy when you can't just send them outside to play in the dirt, and when all of the local parks are perpetually covered in "eucky water."  Yesterday we had a really fun experiment, my daughter and I, learning how to make, and play with, Oobleck

I couldn't believe how ridiculously fun it was to play with this stuff.  Add two parts corn starch to one part water, and you have instant, ooey, gooey, quicksand-like goop.  Daughter called it her "goobey," and was hugely disappointed when it spilled off the table.  Thank goodness, her "goobey" was as easy to clean up as it was to make.  A quick sweep of the vacuum cleaner, and all was well in the kingdom.

We're all super excited over here about General Conference coming up this weekend, and I've been on the hunt for kid-friendly "conference activities."  There's a Nursery and Junior Primary packet at Sugardoodle.net, and the church has a couple of different print-outs available here, but I think they're a little beyond my wee ones at home.  I was desperately seeking out a puzzle of the First Presidency, or of President Monson alone, but no luck.  Deseret did have a couple of beautiful puzzles of the Savior available, but they were all 500+ pieces, or "tray puzzles," whatever that means.  The packets from Sugardoodle at least have some coloring pages, but I don't really know what to do aside from that.  They're too young to take notes, and I don't want it to be a mad-cap game of "let's see who can still reverently the longest."  Last year the kiddos got to take breaks to go run outside on their swing-set.  I'm not sure what on earth we'll do this year.  John fixed the kid's trampoline for them last week, but Daughter broke the elastic cord while showing me what a big strong girl she is and doing "super giant jumps."  Aside from that, the kiddos get next to no physical activity, and I'm not about to run them to the play place at the mall to go run around for an hour when they get antsy during conference. Hmmmmm. I think this definitely counts as an exercise for my problem-solving skills.  What are your favorites for keeping young ones busy during conference?  I read a great post last night about a family that gave a Family Home Evening lesson about King Benjamin, and how all the families that came to listen to his speech turned their tents toward him so that they could listen to him better.  After their Family Home Evening, they set up their camping tent in their living room with the door open towards the television to watch our modern-day prophets give their own speeches to the people.  I thought that was such a cute, and memorable idea.  What kid isn't going to remember the time that they got to watch General Conference inside their tent?

Anywho, I'll keep up the watch for great ideas, and try to repost all the good ones that I find here.  Have a fun week until then.

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