Christmas Ornament Countdown

We get a children's magazine in the mail called The Friend. In December's issue, there was a Christmas Ornament Countdown. You can find it on their website if you'd like to print it & make one.



I wanted it to last, so after cutting the tree & ornaments out, I laminated the ornaments & used clear contact paper to do a makeshift laminating of the tree (which was too big for my laminator). We lost the page with the questions, so I typed them out, printed them, and put them on the back of the tree.

Here's what we do each day:
1. One of the girls chooses an ornament
2. Talia gets practise reading the book name, chapter, and verse
3. I tell her the question, look up & read the scripture.
4. Talia tells me the answer
5. One of the girls gets to stick the ornament on the tree with a piece of rolled tape.

I wish our advent calendar's cups were just a little bigger so that I could have put the ornaments in each of the cups!

True Meaning of Easter

We don't expect the Easter Bunny to show up here until tomorrow, but this morning the girls had a little egg hunt designed by their parents. :) We hid plastic eggs that had paper pieces inside of them. (From an old issue of The Friend Magazine)

After all of the eggs were found, we put the papers in order & read the Easter Story. I was surprised how much Talia rememebered from the one other time this week that we talked about the story.

We had a few eggs left over, so we put goldfish crackers in one, cheerios in one, gummy bear vitamins in one, and coloured marshmallows in one. This video catches Katrina's reaction when she opened one of the eggs with treats in it- it was so cute! :)

After the hunt, Talia announced that there was just enough sugar! lol This girl is health conscious somehow! :) They really enjoyed this hunt even though most of the eggs only had paper in them, and the ones that had treats weren't too out of the ordinary. Just goes to show you that they really don't need all of the extra sugar that we tend to give them! (However, I think that only applies upto a certain age, because I certainly love getting good chocolate ;)

General Conference Ideas

In my church, we have a General Conference twice a year. It's coming up this weekend, so we'll be listening online and attending our church building for the different sessions over the weekend.

It's a great opportunity to hear our church leaders speak, but it's a bit tricky to keep young kids interested during it!

I did some searching online & found some great, free resources for keeping kids entertained/busy/interested during conference.


First, a General Conference Notebook right from the church website. It has pictures of each of church leaders and spots to write about what they spoke about. It also has questions to answer. (This is a bit advanced for my kids)

They also have some online Conference Games that your kids can play in preparation for conference.

Check out Sugar Doodle for a cute General Conference Packet that you can print. She's also got colouring pages and other activities for ages from Junior Primary up to Youth.

There's another General Conference Activity Packet from a blogger who calls her blog, Magnify or Simplify. There are a ton of great and different activities in this one!

If you've found other resources, please share them in the comments!

The Friend - Stories Online

I want to do more religious acivities with Talia, so hopefully this will remind me to do that!

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Did you know you can listen to stories from The Friend online, here?

If you get the magazine by mail, you can have your child look at the pictures in the magazine while they listen to the story. Of course, reading to them yourself is ideal, but I think Talia likes to be able to have things for her to do on the computer sometimes :)

Note: The rest of the magazine is also available to be listened to here. These go back to 2004.

Blessings Doorknob Hanger

In the January 2010 issue of The Friend, there was a page with a cut out for a door hanger that your child could write what Heavenly Father has blessed them with on it. I asked her what Heavenly Father has blessed her with, and drew Talia's family for her & then she wanted to draw her Grandma & Grandpa. You can find the printable page online, here.