Thursday, March 28, 2019

What's in Your Church Bag?

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.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Friend Magazine

Our church has a magazine subscription you can have mailed to you or you can download to your device. This is the kids version (intended for age 3-11) we have another for the youth and then adults. 


We love having this in our home as another way to bring the spirit into our home. There are so many great features in the magazine that can be used in conjunction to teaching the children. One of the greatest features they added this years monthly editions is the COME FOLLOW ME marker on the pages that tie to that months weekly personal studies and lessons. 


Sometimes having these little helps make teaching kids a lot easier for busy parents. We love having these extra stories, games and coloring pages for our boys as we go through the lessons as a family to prepare for that weeks Sunday meetings. 





Another fun page they have is a page filled with content from kids by kids. Kids can write letters in, share pictures and stories they then have a chance to have them published. 


Another cool thing about The Friend is that it is like having 2 magazines in 1. From one side it is geared towards SR Primary (age 8-10) and from the other side it is geared towards Jr Primary (ages 3-8). The content is then geared toward those ages 


One of our favorite pages is the easy reader/ Picto reading. my boys love reading and this gives them the chance to read by themselves.


The stories are shorter in the JR side and have more pictures. This section also has the COME FOLLOW ME markers on the page for teaching the younger group. Our 4 year old loves when we use this for family study to talk about the weeks lessons. 


Thursday, March 14, 2019

Dinosaur Puzzles by Highlights

Just a quick LOVE IT post

My kids love these book! They are a look and find (hidden picture) and coloring page all in one. My boys will find all the hidden objects on the page and color them in one color and then color the picture. 

You can find the book on amazon here