Our Church is a 2 hour block. The first hour is everyone together, we have a couple speakers with spiritual messages and the sacrament passed. Keeping little kids still and quiet is hard for 5 minutes let alone an hour and we have had our fun of finding the perfect combination. Not everything works for everyone and honestly for us each time we revamp it usually only works for a few months.
A few tips to making it work
1) What is in the church bag stays. Our kids don't get to play with anything in the bag during the week unless we are going to something they need to stay quiet at. Ie graduation, banquets, meetings
2) Have several bags to hold sets/ like items together.
3) if they stop playing with it for a couple weeks take it out and change it over to something else for a bit
4) Be ready to share with others when the time is needed
So What is in our bag right now???
Activity Books. We keep a variety in our bag and our kids use all of them each week.
Sticker books are amazing! All 3 boys love this one my mom got them (click here) Inside the pages are set up for you to add stickers to the scene or color on the page. It also includes a couple pages of random stickers for them to put everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
Another one the boys like is this look and find Dino book. The boys love look and finds and with this one they get to color the pictures as they find the different items on the list. (click here)
We also have a church coloring book from Living Scriptures filled with pictures, puzzles, word searches and mazes. You can see more here. Finally we have the last months kids magazine, The Friend. Inside is stories, pictures to color, activities and more based on the months lessons.
This one is a trouble maker right now but it entertains the kids for so long. We have to carry our regular sized doodle pad as well as a travel size. Lately my 18 month old niece has taken to commandeering our large one causing a little drama with A our 2 year old. After a minute or 2 he is content with the travel size one and as soon as she puts the big one down he has it on his lap.
You can never go wrong with crayons and paper we use a pencil box because every crayon box tears over time and this way several hands can all fit in it at the same time.
Diaper and wipes for easy grab and go. Snacks. This is all that was left in the bag from this week we usually add stuff the morning of based on what the kids ask for, although our kids tend to raid grandma and grandpa's bag for the good stuff. They tend to have fruit snacks, candy, cheese its, cheese sticks, cookies ect.
Now for the toys. Above is the Nativity set my mom got us, the figures are puppets. (fuzzy pic) Shows all the figures and the draw string storage bag.
Clear bag holding all our cars, peg people and a couple frogs. Yes I said frogs...you know those cheep party favor ones you push down to make them hop.
Last but not least we have a couple small puzzles the kids can do on their own.
