Sunday, August 16, 2009

Our new sacrament meeting tradition

Ahhhh...made it through another Sunday. Sometimes that feels like a huge accomplishment.

Andrew is still not back to 100%. He had a "minor" surgery on Friday to have his kidney stone removed. You never know how minor it will actually be. He had complications in recovery and had me downright scared for a couple of hours there. Everything is OK now, but he is just still really worn out and uncomfortable. Dang. Here the surgeon had me thinking we could be running laps by today if we wanted.

Anyway, I wanted to share something we've been working on with our older kids to improve reverence at church. It has been going pretty well. I got the idea from an article in The Friend magazine a few months back.

I got each of them a notebook from the dollar store
and challenged them to listen to the talks at church.
They need to write something down that they hear
from each speaker.

Whit's are real basic.
She listens for a word and
draws a picture.
This one is the temple.


Sometimes she'll also sound out the word.

And then sometimes she gets distracted
and starts drawing swirlies and pictures of the EXIT signs.
She's a five-year-old girl.

Brandon goes a little more in-depth.
He's supposed to write what the
talk was about or something that he learned.
That takes some listening!
I am so impressed with him.
I'm so distracted with Caroline that I
think he might hear more than me!

My favorite so far has been the second #2 on
this page, "a movie creator and fathers."
Toni, he was paying attention to your talk!

As a reward for their efforts, they earn Big Kid Time to spend with us after we put Caroline to bed. We usually play a board game. Our favorites lately have been Apples to Apples Junior, Cinderella's Enchanted Slipper and

Settlers of Cataan.
It's so fun that Brandon is old enough
to understand and enjoy this game now.
And he's good!
(Whit is just kind of along for the ride on
the weeks we play it, though. She likes
rolling the dice for Andrew and me.)

8 comments:

amy said...

That's a great Sacrament meeting idea. We just started doing Daddy/Jack time after we put Macy to bed. That's what they're doing right now while I check blogs. (-:

Do your kids keep journals or are these their journals too? I think it's hilarious to look back at stuff I wrote when I was their ages.

The Oregonians said...

Hope you're feeling better, soon, Andrew.

Natalie said...

I am not surprised that Brandon gets more out of sacrament meeting than I do. Just don't tell his dad!

Unknown said...

Great idea for sacrament meeting. I'm sorry Andrew has had such a rough time lately. Hope he recovers quickly from surgery.
Yay! We've been itching to play Settler's (ours is Zarahemla) so maybe we'll have time to pull it out Friday night after the conference.

The Normal Mormon Husband said...

You are so creative with the kids. I think I need something like that to keep my 2nd Counselor listening from the stand.

carrie said...

What a great idea!

Grandma Sweat said...

Absolutely wonderful idea - Brandon and Whitney will have learned so much about the gospel as little kids - your ideas are always inspiring! Love you!
Grandma Sweat

Unknown said...

Sounds like a great idea, you are a wonderful mom!