i need your help! ANYONE!
 

Hey Guys!
I still need advise on a retreat!

-no beer
-60 girls
-its a bonding retreat

family feud was an awesome idea and the collage!

but i need to keep them busy for a couple of a days not just one night! lol

i am still trying to think of something we can do with the frats!!

what you guys think???
please help me out! not a lot of time left!!!! AHH :eek:

What is the venue?

Camping? Lodges? Hotel?

Give me something to work with here.

umm didnt you get it - there's no beer.

right now we just have our sorority house. last year we tried camping....no go no one liked it

yes there is no beer....

You realllllllly need to try to have it off-site. That alone will create a better mood.

Try to find a book of icebreakers and team building activities at a bookstore or online.

And what is the point of the retreat? Sisterhood? Rush preparation? How many members are we talking about? A chapter I advised had a really great retreat with about 20 girls at a beach house. It would be tougher with larger numbers.

Ok, go to a retreat center. They're cabins with bunkbeds and a big open meeting room or two for you to use. Do fun bonding activities and serious bonding ones. Playing "all my sisters who" is fun. Playing "the newlywed game" with bigs and littles is fun. Having the whole chapter (try to ) learn a dance that you do at recruitment is fun. Bonfires, fun.

Candlepasses, serious bonding. writing something that you're ready to get rid of on a piece of paper and throwing it into the fire is serious bonding.

(AND STOP POSTING THIS EVERYWHERE. )

Pillow fight?

Well, my chapter loved to go camping...granted, it was camping on the beach...

We used to play a game that was a great way to get to know your sisters. Everyone writes down on a piece of paper, anonymously, one thing about themselves that they don't think anyone else in the room knows. All the pieces of paper go in a hat/pillowcase, and everyone takes turns picking one piece out and reading it to the chapter. Everyone tries to guess which person wrote which fact. Usually it's really funny and brings out new sides of people that you never knew about.

We JUST did that at my chapter retreat this past weekend!

Ropes course?

my campus has an outdoor adventure course....like a ropes course (it's more of a climbing/rappell tower)...my sorority has never done it, but a bunch of girls in my pledge class did it as a bonding activity and it was pretty BA and took most of a day...if you can't find anything like that in your area, maybe look for a rock climbing gym? any activity where the majority of the girls look like idiots becacuse they don't know what they are doing will be fun. Also, we've gone to corn mazes (okay, so we go to school in the midwest) and had bonfires for sisterhood activites...those are always fun.

We did for our retreat....but we played this game in Bingo form. So it had each fact about sisters and you had to fill the bingo form.


To the OP: maybe i'm confused, but if your trying to have a "bonding retreat" why are you worried about something to do with the fraternities? Don't worry about the boys....just focus on your sisters. IMHO, Alcohol shouldn't determine whether you have a good time or not.

Capture the flag? IF it's on campus, do a campus-wide scavenger hunt (with a rule of NO CARS so there will be no risk management issues). Spa activities? Crafts? Themed movie time? Plan to write a new ritual or rediscover an old one. Or just make ritual part of it. That can make it more meaningful to everyone.

Perhaps you could set aside some time to take everyone off-campus for an organized activity, like a team-building ropes course, hiking, horseback riding, reserve a private room at a restaurant and have a sisterhood dinner.

End the retreat with an awards ceremony with paper plate awards and silly superlatives.

We did cool things like the anonymous fact game, and we split into groups with sisters from different pledge classes and answered questions on sigma kappa trivia. Then we had a bunch of envelopes with different dollar amounts in, whoever won got to pick their envelope first, and so on. Then we had to go out for like 2 hours and try to do something with the money that had something to do with sisterhood (tangible items. My group took a picture of all of us standing at a street sign (Triangle Street), made the sigma kappa handsign, printed it out at cvs, got a cheap photo frame and stickers and stuck sisterhood on it. All for $5).
Cool things like watch a movie together that has meaning for your chapter or sorority (every Sigma Kappa knows or has seen Mystic Pizza), sit in a circle and say why you love your chapter, everyone writes down their name and one person pulls it out and each sister has to say one nice thing about the person whose name was drawn.
Deep down inside, everyone is five years old. Embrace that, treat it like a big slumber party?.

Ooh another good one we did. We each got a piece of paper, wrote our name on it (decoratively like with stencils and drew stuff we liked. I drew a big Boston Red Sox B on mine) and then you get your sisters to write messages to each other on them. Those are really awesome to look back on, I still have mine.

Mystic River? I thought it was Mystic Pizza that had Sigma Kappa significance.

Shhhhh don't tell her. :p It'll be more fun if she watches Mystic River looking for hearts and doves!

Hahaha yeah that's what happens when I go off on a tangent while on percocets and valium. I even own a copy of the movie, I have no excuse!

If you are doing it at the house, call it a "Sisterhood Lockdown" and make cute t-shirts.

Is the purpose a beginning of the year retreat? How many hours are members going to be there?

Set up a schedule from roll call at check in to dismissal the following day. Have some wiggle room in the schedule, but list out what you need to accomplish during the retreat and allot the appropriate amount of time.

Make sure the members have a copy of the agenda.

I think that with a large group, time is more effectively used when you break into smaller teams that rotate throughout "stations" for the retreat (IE: reviewing standards code, reviewing academic program, craft stations, etc.) and then coming back together for games or singing songs.

The best retreats are ones where the leaders talk less and the members interact more. If you're reviewing the standards code, why not break the chapter into small groups to "act" out an inappropriate behavior, and have the chapter talk about what they did and what is correct. The standards chair moderates the skits and the discussion. Everyone is involved, and it is presented in a positive way, so people feel less like they are being preached at and more involved in the process.

Ice-breakers are a great way to get started. Also, a take-home craft is a good memento of the retreat.

I figured it was a typing error- but I don't want anyone to go watch Mystic River thinking it has any sorority symbolism in it!

Those are great ideas!!!

Theres 60 girls
we live on farms... (not as good as on a beach!!)
its a bonding retreat!

Just a thought
 

what about a nature hunt, of things the have around them that have some meaning that comes to them in there time of being on this retreat, and share it meaning at a gathering at the end of the day. This may bring some new views as well different opinions of the world and people around them. Good luck and Happy Trails
Pickel

It does. I mean, I'm from MA and my sorority likes to kill people. It's not even symbolism, it's totally fact!

Hmm, that would explain all of the screaming we heard coming from the Sigma Kappa house on the day of their initiation ceremony. :p

Big bonfire - Sit in a cirle around the fire and let the brothers/sisters call each other out onthe crap that has been building up for quite sometime. You would be amazed at how fast people can become closer just because they are willing to talk about what about a person or a persons actions piss them off. Be careful this has the potential to be a very good thing but it could also be very bad. If you are truly brothers/sisters you people should be fine.

There's a great book called "If" that has open-ended questions you can present to a group. We had this at our PX retreat many moons again.

If you can't do a bonfire, you can still sit in a circle and pass a stuffed animal or sorority symbol around. Each person can say something positive about their experience with the sorority.

If you're doing an event at a farm, you could theme it as "Ranch Retreat" or "Frontier Living." You could have some kind of merit badge system where you earn a reward for every part of the retreat you complete-- maybe this is something members can display in their rooms later as a reminder of retreat and the things they learned.

Side note: Keep the retreat positive and focused on good things. Guys seem to be a lot better at confronting issues and settling them more quickly... girls take a lot too personally. If you're in a sisterhood lockdown, any drama brought out into the open could really ruin the mood you are trying to set. Especially at the beginning of the school year, when you're bonding with new members and helping them reaffirm that they joined a wonderful chapter.

Inter-chapter drama should be dealt with though-- I think any chapter benefits from a semesterly "Town Hall" style meeting where the members can address any issues that have been bubbling under the surface and offering solutions to issues bothering the chapter. Exec moderates, but doesn't jump on the defensive-- just listening and taking notes.

The game Loaded Questions is also good if you want to learn new things about people.

http://www.loadedquestions.com/loadedquestions.html

Looks cool!

I should probably point out that these are girls not guys. That will turn bad extremely fast and when there's fire involved? It's a murder waiting to happen.