General Conference Store!

 Hey everybody!  I hope you all had a great weekend!

Today I wanted to share what we did last year to make the most out of our General Conference experience with our children.  I have to say...I got this wonderful idea from my sister-in-law, so ALL the credit goes to her!  I have tried a bunch of different things to keep my kids quiet and attentive during conference and so far, this has been the best!  They don't end up all hyped up on candy, and they are listening with intent...win-win for everyone!

Last April we opened up our very own General Conference Store!

To get started I found 4 buckets I had laying around, and using chalkboard signs I labeled them with individual topics.  I let my older kids pick out a subject that they were hoping they would hear about and filled in the rest.  Then I filled each bucket with tickets I got at the dollar store.

As we listened to conference each time the kids would hear one of our words, they could get one ticket out of the bucket.  I loved this so much more than getting candy...we tried that the year before and they got a little wild by the end ;)

By the end of conference all the kids had buckets full of tickets and couldn't wait to spend them!  I loved my sisters idea of having her kids wait to use their tickets until Family Home Evening the next night, so we did the same thing.

The next night I set out our same buckets, but this time filled them with different items I had purchased earlier in the week.  Each bucket had a different ticket value on it depending on what was in the bucket.  I went to some local stores like Seagull Book and Deseret Book and picked out a bunch of things for the kids to choose from.  Some of the things we had were:

Scripture Pencils

CTR rings

Coloring Books

Article of Faith Cards

Matching Games

Gum

Fruit Snacks

I loved that the prizes they were able to buy were things that (mostly) would encourage them to continue to grow in the gospel.

I am so grateful to my sister Camille for this wonderful idea!  The kids are so excited for our conference store this year, and I could not be more ready to receive counsel and guidance from our latter day Prophets! :)