How I Do it: Sacrament Meeting With Kids

We've all seen this question around a lot, "How do you help your kids sit quietly in Sacrament meeting?"  

So I thought I'd share what we do and what works for our family.  

We have a church bag for each of the girls.

I keep them in a basket in the backseat of the van and the girls carry them in 

to church themselves each week.  

Here is what we have inside of their bags!

This one above is Mary's bag, Avery's is a little different, but for the most part they're the same.

In Mary's we have temple pictures, church books, popsicle stick puzzles, and a three ring binder with dry erase markers.

In the binders we have page protectors with church related coloring pages, word searches, and mazes.  We keep them in the page protectors so the girls can use the dry erase markers on them and they can do them week after week!  

Each General Conference I switch out the pictures for new ones.  

As for Ethan buddy, we have a few special things for him in the diaper bag.  

Sundays are pretty much the only day we actually use our diaper bag!  

Here are the few things we have for him.

We have a quiet book that my sister Charissa gave to us and Ethan loves!  Some snacks (which I have for all of the kids, they get them after sacrament), and a random toy I made years ago.  It's a Pringles can that I punched holes in the lid and he puts the pipe cleaners in the holes.  Or he just takes the lid on and off!  We also have some books for him.  

These things work for us and our kids, and most weeks things go okay.  Other weeks I am taking one kid after another out of the chapel.  Because kids are crazy and unpredictable.  Like sometimes Avery just has to keep pulling her dress up, or Mary keeps climbing on the side of the pew, or "Mom, I have to pee!"  For the most part though I'm really liking the system we have going on.  Hopefully some of these will work for you and your kids!