Little Gardeners

'Tis the season for growing new things, and I helped my kids plant some seeds to watch grow indoors before we plant them out in the garden.

We planted bean seeds in plastic cups and placed them in plastic ziplock bags. They are currently sitting in our bathroom out of the sun, where they will stay until they sprout.

Once they have sprouted, we will take them out of the plastic bags and begin introducing them to the sun. Then once the weather is more consistently warm, we will begin introducing them to the outdoors during the day to harden them off. Then into the ground they'll go once it is safe to plant.

Post-Easter Fun

I don't know about the rest of you, but I always feel a big let-down after a fun holiday. This day-after-Easter is no exception. We had such a good time at our Easter egg hunts over the past couple of days; so, today, since my kids were a little restless (and high on Easter candy), we decided to have another Easter egg hunt. We still had all the eggs out from the real thing yesterday, so I had them to fill up a few eggs with small toys from the playroom then hide them for the other to find. They had a great time finding toys to hide, and you'd think it was Easter all over again when they discovered what was hidden in the eggs they found.

When We’re Helping We’re Happy!

A big focus at my house lately has been how to get my house clean and organized without having to do it all by myself, yet also teaching my girls that working together around the house can be fun. I started with a fun way that would get the girls attention. I made the job flower pot. The materials you would need for this are: a pot of some kind to hold the flowers, craft sticks, flowers cut from paper (I stamped mine and then punched them out), glue stick or hot glue, and a filler for the pot (I used wheat since I have quite a bit in food storage!) I made the flowers and glued them onto the craft sticks. Then I wrote jobs that my 4 year old could do on her own, or was ready to learn how to do on her own at the bottom of the sticks. (I put one stick in that said FREE DAY just to mix it up a bit.) Fill the pot with the filler and flowers and there you go! Believe it or not the 4 year old gets excited when I ask her to pick a job. It's a surprise every morning! Sometimes whatever her job is determines where I will start too. If she cleans her room, I clean mine!

 

Conference Ideas

This weekend is the general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And it can be an incredibly uplifting weekend, or a frustrating and emotionally and physically draining time of year. The latter is true most often for those of us with small children. Gone are the days when you could sit in peace and quiet and listen to the messages given by these men and women of God. So, what can you do to help your kids be engaged in good/quiet things during conference weekend? (A question I ask myself every six months.) Here are a few suggestions and links to get your brain going: (If you are new to links, just click on the blue or gray words to go directly to the idea I am referring to.)

• The LDS Church website has a list that is worth checking out. The page I've linked is the Friend magazine, which has changed a lot with a lot of neat things for kids to do.
  
• I've recently come across a blog called BecomingLDS which recently had a list of ideas of things for kids to do during conference.
  
• Sugardoodle.net has a lot of different ideas for conference. Their full list is here. Included in that list are some conference packets. To get straight to those, click here or here. For younger kids, they have some conference coloring books. For those, click here or here.
  
• I found a great idea on a blog called lovehugsandgiggles. The idea is to do a conference wall where you have several topics that will likely be addressed in conference with pictures to go with them. Then each child has a set of apostle cards, and when one of the apostles speaks about one of those topics, they stick their card on that topic. She has several ideas in her post. If you'd like to read her whole post click here.
  
• Something that I've done in the past with my really little ones is to decide on one or two words that the child will listen for throughout all the sessions. Write the word on a piece of paper, and everytime they hear that word, they put a sticker on their paper. You could combine this idea with the conference wall idea by placing a sticker on one of the topics you have on the wall when someone other than apostle speaks on that topic.
  
• As was mentioned in lovehugsandgiggles blog, you could have a different simple craft prepared for each session of conference. I am planning to have my kids do some sort of beading activity, as well as having them decorate a picture frame with stickers, beads or buttons.
  
• My oldest is just learning how to write her letters, so I thought it might be a good idea to put together a page with all the apostles on it with a line underneath it so we could help her write their last names.
  
• One last idea is to put together a Conference Basket complete with activities, snacks, pencils, crayons, paper, and any other crafts or activities you have for them during that session. Click here to see a blog post about this.

If anyone has any other thoughts or ideas or things that have worked for you in the past, please leave a comment.