Sacrament Meeting Activities for Kids

 Few things can ruin a good Sacrament Meeting experience faster than restless, squabbling children. While I'd love for my children to sit reverently with rapt attention, I realize that a good a coloring page can occupy little hands, and yet leave their ears free to catch a few doctrinal gems from the speakers.

I finally wised up to the fact that my kids were utterly bored by the same old things in our "church bag" of activities, so today we tried something new. I emptied the bag of tired toys, ragged coloring books, and a bag of broken crayons with unwanted colors.

I decided to make a small packet of activities for each child. Today they got a color by number page, a maze and a word search. (Lauren and Zach's word search was more challenging.) I threw in fresh boxes of crayons, some snacks, and we were off.

Our family rule is that you need to sit reverently through the opening of the meeting: the song, prayer, announcements, sacrament (and hopefully the youth speaker.) They're pretty good about it, but near the end of the sacrament, the little guys are getting close to spontaneous combustion.

Today we started with snacks, (honestly... because church starts at 12:30 and the chaos of getting ready, they hadn't eaten lunch.) Next, I passed out the individual packets and a fresh box of crayons to each child.

I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW GOOD THEY WERE!!!

Everyone stayed in their seats instead of wandering between Mom and Dad. There was no fighting over toys, the best coloring book, or the one red crayon. They were fabulously quiet! It was amazing how something so simple, but fresh, could occupy their hands and minds so beautifully.

I'm committed to this idea now.  I keep wondering why I didn't think of it before. I spent part of the afternoon looking at lds.org for more church related coloring pages, word games, puzzles and activities. There's a treasure of them online! I'm also planning to throw in something holiday related each month (Easter pictures for April, etc.) I want to do something prophet oriented prior to General Conference. I found the "For Little Friends" pages helpful for Max and Jared. I copied the "Journal Junction" ideas for Lauren and Zach (they're found in the Bulletin Board segment in The Friend.) I'm putting packets together for the next couple of weeks, and I'm so hopeful that we can have more peaceful Sacrament Meetings - Heavenly!