General Conference Activity Bag Swap

 My sister-in-law, Kate, had a brilliant idea! A General Conference busy bag swap! Since I loved the toddler busy bag swap that I participated in last year, I knew this would be equally beneficial. With a 4 year and 18 month old, it's nice to have a few things up my sleeve to keep them busy during General Conference! About 6 moms participated, and we emailed eachother the activity we had chosen to do and make for everyone. Kate had a pinterest board full of ideas to choose from, or we could find our own. Then we got together the morning before conference, swapped our activities, and were set for the weekend! Easy peasy.

Here's Cami with some of her activities. Kate did a cute magnetic activity, with pictures of the prophet and apostles with their last name letters and ties with dots. They came with a cookie sheet, so you place the page on the cookie sheet, and then use pom poms with magnets glued on them to fill in the dots. There's also pages with words to spell out with magnetic alphabet letters. So fun!!

 Another activity was a set of Bendaroos...those bendy wax sticks in various colors that can be molded into different shapes/objects. They came with little laminated cards with CTR and other pictures printed on them to serve as a template for using the bendaroos. I loved getting these- they're so fun to play with! However, Cami didn't give them much of a chance because she got frustrated with them, that she couldn't shape them into cool things. But they're fun to have around, and to stick in my church bag for Sundays! I may or may not be guilty of sitting in sacrament and entertaining myself by braiding Bendaroos.

Other activities that were included in our swap that I didn't take a picture of include: a file folder family matching game. It's a manilla folder, laminated, with pictures of members of a family, with matching cards with velcro to match. My girls love playing with this during church! 

There was also a memory game with spiritual pictures, which we didn't get around to playing during Conference, but it's fun to have.

I made sure to have lots of fun coloring things for Cam. She loved coloring these princess pictures with markers, and playing Conference bingo.

 And this is the activity that I decided to do. A Conference Train! I got the idea on pinterest, of course, and thought it was cute and simple. The details and instructions are here on this cute blog full of tons of creative ideas. I included 4 copies of each train car topic....and there were 9 topics, so that's what, 36 cars per activity bag? And there were 6 moms, so that's a lot of train cars to make! I underestimate the amount of time it would take, so I was up for a long time the night before, making these little guys. But luckily I have a wonderful husband who took pity on me and sat and helped. They turned out super cute!

 Cami had fun listening to the talks in the background and perked up whenever she heard one of the train car topics mentioned, and built her train along the window bench in the living room.

And another activity someone included was instructions on how to make necktie pancakes, complete with a sqeeze bottle to use for the pancake batter, and toppings to decorate. Cute! Cami was so excited when I told her she got to make necktie pancakes for Conference morning.

 And even though it doesn't show here, she really was excited to eat them. :)

Yay for tie pancakes! And yay for an awesome General Conference busy bag swap. Success!