Gospel Busy Book Idea for Children-Compiled by The Friend Magazine

I recently went to a busy bag exchange and it got my wheels turning.  My girls LOVED all the activities, but I felt like I wanted something GOSPEL related that I could just Grab-and-Go for church.

My girls LOVE all the activities in the Friend.  However, up to this point, every activity in our Friend magazine's have been scribbled on.  I wanted a way to preserve the fun activities and be able to reuse them.  I really didn't want to spend $$$ on laminating them, so I found that just by inserting them into a page protector gave me the same result.
 

I bought 5 tab dividers I inserted within the Book and came up with 5 different sections of activities.  If you log onto www.lds.org, you can find past issues of The Friend and can print out many of the activities. You can also cut the pages out of your magazines, which I what I did for most of it.

Dry Erase Markers work really well on Sheet Protectors.  For the eraser, I just used pinking shears to cut a decorative edge on felt.

 Here's the 5 Sections:

My girls LOVE Seek n' Find games!  These come out of the "Fun Stuf" section of the Friend, which can mostly be printed out online.

2013 Friend magazines are highlighting one Prophet each month on the back page.  I just simply cut out each one  and will collect them throughout the year.

This is perfect for my 6 year old daughter who has learned how to read. This is even great to read to little ones to reinforce gospel teachings. I also have some of the stories of Jesus, which The Friend highlights.

I am thrilled by this!!!  I went to Deseret Industries one night and found some LDS and BIBLE children's activity books in the book aisle for $1 each.  So the activities from above came from those books as well. My girls LOVE mazes and connect the dots and what's better than religious ones!!!

Right: I printed most of the coloring pages from online, but I have also just copied them out of The Friend and placed them in the pocket on the tab page.  On the Left: I made this printable activity myself and will attach it here.  I put it in the "ACTIVITY" section and it's on the Word of Wisdom.

Top: This little binder pocket was from Walmart for $.50 and holds the supplies you'll need for the book. Bottom: Sometimes kids just want to doodle so I added extra paper and stickers for fun.

This has been a HUGE success for me.  My kids ask me for these activities every week and it helps with reverence during Church.  I think it's a great way to preserve your favorite moments from The Friend.  Not to mention, when they get tired of an activity, you can  constantly rotate it.

I purchased this cute bag from Walmart.  My goal with this project is to have it "grab-and-go".  It is important for me, seeing as I have 9am church and it is hard to get there on time!  Also, keeping this as a "Sunday Only Activity" helps keep it fresh and exciting for my girls to look forward to each week. I also have used some of the file folder games from the Finch Family Books (sold online and Deseret Book), which are also in my bag.  I will later post on some of them on here.