Class #4 Traditions (Follow Up)

Here a few more traditions that people shared in class.

• Share a CTR Moment at the dinner table each night.  You have to teach them what a CTR Moment is and have them watch for them throughout the day.  It gets them in the habit of looking for them.

• At the dinner table each night...each person says the best thing about their day and the worst thing about their day.  It gives you the opportunity to see where your children are at and what they are thinking is the best/worst in each day.

• When the children are asked to do something the parents taught them to say, "Happy to do it."  It changes their attitude and makes the "happy" to do it.

• Child has bad manners at the table.  They bought a little pig (plastic, stuffed, whatever works).  When they use bad manners that pig gets to sit by their plate until someone else uses bad manners and it has to be passed to them.  The last one at the table with the pig by their plate when they are finished eating gets to do the dishes.  It's a fun playful way to get them to pay attention to their table manners.

• Gummy Bear Treasure Hunt:  This is one of those traditions that wasn't planned, but has become a tradition in our home.  After General Conference we order an Ensign of Conference for each of our children.  The first year we did this I didn't just want to hand over their magazines, because I knew that they wouldn't know what to do with them and what was available to them in it.  I had a package of gummy bears in my cupboard so I pulled them out and some little containers for each person.  I told them we were going to have a Gummy Bear Treasure Hunt which immediately got their interest because there was candy involved and it was a treasure hunt (and who doesn't like those).  I showed them that their Ensign had their own names written on the outside of them and it was theirs to keep with their scriptures for the next 6 months because that was the most recent scripture we were given by our living prophets.  Then I proceeded to tell them that they needed to be able to find the things in their that they had already heard in Conference.  So I had everyone turn to the index in the front of the Ensign and showed them how the talks were listed by Conference Session, Speaker, and Topic.  Then said, "As soon as you can  turn to the first page of the Saturday afternoon session of conference you can have a gummy bear."  As each person got there, each person got a gummy bear.  Those that got there first would help the others that weren't there yet or they would look at what the talk was.  We continued this with other questions like....How many talks were given by Dallin H. Oaks?  How many missionaries are out right now? (This only works after the April Conference when they give the statistics for the previous year) The year that my twin boys were baptized I asked them how many "children of record" were baptized this year?  Then afterwards we told them that they were part of that number.  They loved knowing that they were in the Ensign.  What were the top 3 topics that were talked about?  Can you find the poster of all the prophets and apostles?  Who is the Primary General President?  (this gets them looking for the other pictures for the rest of the general auxiliaries) Who spoke about baptism?  Turn to a talk that was not given by one of the First Presidency or the 12 Apostles.  Lots of different answers for this one.  Turn to the first page of the Priesthood session.  How old do you have to be to attend the Priesthood session of General Conference?  How many more Conferences do you have before you will be able to attend that one?  Find the story about __________  then turn to it?  (this taught them to look up their favorite stories in the story index).  They then had to draw a little picture next to the story so they could find it again if they were flipping through their magazine.  How many new temples were announces?  Who announced them?  Where are they?  How many of those are in the United States?  How many pictures of President Monson are there in this Ensign?  It was not a competition.  Everyone found the answers.  Everyone got the candy. Everyone had a blast!  Their Conference issues did not look brand new when they were done, but they knew where things were.  It became personal to them and they became "theirs".  Which is exactly what I think needs to be done with the words of the prophets.  It made them much more accessible to them on a level that they could understand.  The next time General Conference rolled around as soon as it was over my kids asked me if they were going to get to do the Gummy Bear Treasure Hunt again when they got their Conference Issues.  It was interesting to me that they said, "when" they got their Ensign, not "if".  They already knew that they were going to get another copy that wasn't the question.  I told them that they would have to wait until the Ensign came out and that would be 2-3 weeks away.  As that time started to draw closer they would rush home from school and check to see if the mail was here so they could get their Ensign.  You would have thought it was Christmas the day they found their Conference Issues in the mail.  :)  We have done this enough times that we have our kids come up with things for us to find now.  It's pretty interesting how tricky they try to make them.  

What other traditions do you have in your family?  Please post them in the comments so we can all get some new ideas.