General Conference Treasures

Shortly after last General Conference we discovered this little treasure on the internet through the wonders of mass emailing.


A few weeks ago we were watching it again and I wondered, have they made a new one yet? Of course, I knew they didn't know who the new apostle will be - but just maybe . . .


What a treasure this has been to help my kids become excited about the apostles. We are looking forward to seeing the new video when it comes out after conference and the chance to get to know another new apostle.

Speaking of apostles this week we will be learning about the apostles to prepare ourselves better for General Conference. Here are some of the resources we will be using:


The Special Witnesses pages in the 2002 Friend was a Getting to Know (the Apostles) page.
January - Elder Jeffery R. Holland
February - Boyd K. Packer
March - Elder Henry B. Eyring
April - Elder Richard G. Scott
May - Elder Dallin H. Oaks
June - Elder Russell M. Nelson
July - Elder L. Tom Perry
August - M. Russell Ballard
September - Joseph B. Wirthlin
October - Robert D. Hales
November - David A. Bednar
December - Dieter F. Utchdorf

The 2006 Friend had Guess Who pages for Each of the Apostles.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
The individual links take you to the text pages, but you can also get the pdf version by going to the main page for Friend.

Once we have learned a little bit about each of the apostles, and what their jobs and responsibilities are we need to better prepare ourselves for listening to their inspired messages.

In the March 2009 Ensign there was an article titled Preparing our Children for General Conference that gave some great ideas for turning General Conference into a spiritual experience for the whole family.

I've never really thought about what I needed to do to prepare for General Conference so this post by Bethany on Preparing for General Conference was really eye opening for me. I also liked this Pre-Conference Checklist included in General Conference Worksheet by Lisa Smith. Mostly my preparations for General Conference have fallen along the lines of how am I going to keep the kids quiet, happy, and paying attention.

Well, I have good news -

Some wonderful members have put together some packets to use to encourage children and youth to listen to conference. There are a lot of great ideas here - so remember, you can't do them all this time, but conference comes around again every six months (and by then your kids will all be six months older.)

2009 General Conference Packet by Melanie Day

General Conference Ideas/Packets/Games - on Sugerdoodle - this has a whole list of different activities

General Conference Activity Pages from The Idea Door.

General Conference on About.com

Make Conference Memorable by Mormon Mamma

How to Stay Awake and Interested during General Conference - by Bethany


If you are looking for more coloring pages this site - ldscoloringpages.net indexes the coloring pages from the Friend.

As you can see there is a plethora of ideas. I like bits of pieces of all of them, so I pick and choose what to present each time to my kids, each child is different, so each packet can be different. I hope that you can find something that will work for you and your kids.


I look forward to General Conference - and enjoy the time spent with my kids watching and learning. Last conference was the first time we had a DVR and so we took advantage of it and would stop oonference so we could discuss the talks, and take better notes as it was going along. However, I still find that I miss quite a lot while taking care of the younger ones, so I love listening to conference on my MP3 player. You can usually download the MP3's of the conference talks within hours and begin to absorb the messages. I also anxiously await my Ensigns and spend the next 6 months reading and rereading the talks, and taking notes and highlighting them. I truly treasure our inspired modern day scriptures. I hope that this will help you to also treasure the wonderful blessing of a semi-annual General Conference.

Temple Geography

I am excited to be studying Temples this year with my kids. It is part of my Mother's Educational Course that has been such an inspiration to me this year, and has tied in so nicely with all the little bursts of inspiration I was getting last fall but didn't know how to incorporate into my life.

A couple of days a week I have been reading to my kids from Chad Hawkins book The First 100 Temples (Hawkins, Chad S., The First 100 Temples. Deseret Book, 2001). It is a beautifully illustrated book with a page or two on the history of each temple and several faith promoting stories. Included in the illustrations of each temple is a hidden picture. The kids love to find the hidden picture after I finish reading to them.

 

We have also incorporated the Temple Cards that were published in the Friend in 2002. We use the cards find the locations on our large wall map as we review what we remember about that temple. The kids were very excited to find that the book mentioned the first donation to the Mesa Arizona Temple was by Helena Rosebery (one of our relatives).

Rebecca began taking notes about the temples the other day and it got me to thinking that we needed some way to document our tour through the Temples of the World, but I couldn't anything other than the temple cards, and the Temple to Dot the Earth Game (Friend November 2002). So I decided to create my own notebooking pages. I created several versions, since I have kids at various levels. I'm planning on creating a Family Temple Notebook and having a different scribe for the day, since 150 temples is a lot to get through in 52 weeks. I included longitude and latitude because we just learned about it this week, but also to aid in locating the cities on a map. I was surprised to find someone had already created a longitude and latitude list (which is way more accurate than mine was going to be) and not only that but I found 2 interactive temple tours one using Google Earth and one using Live Maps. I'm so thankful for the work that other people create and share with the world through the amazing power of the internet.

I found these Temple Trivia questions on about. Com, but I don't like sites with so many advertisements, especially for my kids, so I created my own Temple Trivia Crossword Puzzle based on The First 100 Temples. I think this will be a fun way for them to review what they have learned, and will be able to look through our notebook to find the answers. I'm looking forward to creating more puzzles after I see what they take notes on as we continue on our world tour.

Rebecca said that she would like a report page so she could do her own research on one of the temple sites that I had found. (It really is true, if you trust the process they do transistion into scholars.)

The House of the Lord – Official LDS Site on Temples

LDS Church Temples – wonderful, up to date page on all the temples, facts, wonderful maps, downloadable screensavers.

Temples to Dot the Earth – Mostly maps of the temples, some interesting statistics, and links to local temple websites.

I have only just begun to create this notebooking pages, it will take me a long time to do 150 also. I wanted to share this now, and see if anyone had any suggestions, or recommendations for particular ones that you would like to use right away. I also want to have something that talks about the importance of the temples, I guess I'll have to search the Friend for more Ideas. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Nancy

Bibliography

I found the longitude and latitude of the temples as a download in an CSV file (can be opened in a spreadsheet program) from (GPS Coordinates CSV File) http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/downloads/

Trivia taken from stories in The First 100 Temples (Hawkins, Chad S., The First 100 Temples. Deseret Book, 2001)

 

The outline pictures of the temples was from the January 1986 Friend ( Pat Graham, "Sharing Time: The Spirit of God," Friend, Jan 1986, 46) but you can download the individual files from this about.com site. The colored temple cards can also be downloaded from about.com at (and can be located easily at this location in a modified format or this location which just links you to the church's site easier. Here are the links to the other months not already listed April 2005 and September 2007.

 

© Nancy Georgeson 2009 –becomingpeculiar.blogspot.com

 

One Minute to a better YOU

As part of my Mom's Ed Course I read, The One Minute Teacher (by Spencer Johnson, M.D. and Constance Johnson, M.Ed.)

I really like the idea of taking just "one minute" not only to review my goals, but also to praise myself for progressing on them, and sometimes to take "one minute" to recognize that I am not progressing towards my goals and to accept taht I did something wrong but that I can turn the situation around and begine working on my gaols again. This reminds me of a quote from Flylady.

"You are not behind! I don't want you to try to catch up; I just want you to
jump in where we are. O.K.?" ~ FlyLady

I have often been guilty of thinking I am so far behind that I will never catch up, but now I try to rememder to tell myself that I don't have to catch up, I just have to start again right where I am.

As I was reading this book I kept thinking of how I need to use the One Minute Recovery when I catch myself in the kitchen eating - when I don't really need to be eating. I also need to set a one minute goal to review, and to remember to praise myself. I also could see ways that this would work with my kids.

I especially want to teach my kids to "Cooperate with Others, Compete with Myself."(pg 85) I love homeschooling my kids for this reason, rather than my kids comparing themselves to their peers it is a lot easier to teach them to compare themselves to where they were last week, last month or last year, and to teach them that as long as they are doing their best and continuing to progress they are successful. I need to teach them to set their own goals, and to learn to praise themselves, and to learn to recover gracefully when they are off track. By teaching them these tools of goal setting, praising, and recovery they can better direct their own life and learn to be the best person they can be.


This book fits in well with some of the other studies that I have been doing - see my posts on habits and sharing - even though I haven't had time to fully explore these areas they all tie together.

I found this great summary of the one minute teacher by Michele - I'd like to further explore her blog.