OT Team Bonding Ideas

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Off Topic
Nov 18, 2010
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Hey guys, my friend's team is struggling a little as of late--lots of arguing, getting put down, etc., and letting personal vendettas against a few ruin the atmosphere for the team as a whole. I've been talking to them and the team mom is encouraging team bonding.

what are some good, fun ideas? The team has a wide age spread (8-17 ish). I've offered to have them all over to my house for a sleep over (I've been very good friends with a lot of the team members for several years, and have had a majority of them over before, just not collectively), but I'd like to hear some other fun ideas we can try to bring them together!
 
going out to a dinner is always fun! or doing "secret pals" where you choose a name out of a hat and you have to bring them something every one or two weeks until the season is over. it makes you appriciate who your "secret pal" is. i didn't like the girl who was mine but when i found out who she was we became really good friends.
 
My team goes on scavenger hunts and its always such a good time! Make sure the teams are split up and divide people into teams with people that they dont usually talk to so they can get to know eachother better. And make the things on the list crazy fun, funny stuff that you will never forget!
 
Formula for a great teambonding sleepover/hangout event:
-Lots of food to munch on
-Lots to keep everyone busy! When kids have time to get bored is when trouble and bad ideas start.
-A big open space where everyone can be at one time (try not to have a lot of small areas for cliques to run off to)
-Teambuilding games: Some of these are old school, but some are great Team Building Games
-A bonding craft (making a team bracelet, putting a bead on everyone on the team's left cheer shoe and telling a story of the meaning of the bead...unity,strength together, etc etc, making a team totem pole: each person gets a piece of paper and picks an animal off the list (Native American Totems and Their Meanings - Page 2) that best represents what they bring to the team, then attempts to draw the animal on the paper and then everyone's is taped vertically together on the wall as the team goes one by one explaining what they picked and why. Then see the visual of how the totem pole is made up of different things but all together it works as one.) Some sort of "one of us is not as strong as all of us" speech/activity is good.
-photo scavenger hunts are also fun

The key is to just keep everyone busy and involved so that they dont have time to think about making trouble and will be too tired to do anything else.
 
Some of my favorite team bonding ideas we had this year was
Pool Party
Carving Pumpkins and Haunted House
Team Lock-in
Mall Scavenger hunt
 
scavenger hunts are fun. I've had teams make t-shirts which everyone enjoyed. The most fun they had was probably during team sleepover, I'd break them into 2 teams and give them another teams music...then they had to create a routine to it. Absolutely hysterical.
 
If you're arguing, DONT have a sleepover. It'll be drama... I'd do something like go out to eat, or maybe go swimming?
 
My team had a tye dye party it was pretty awesome! Haha still have my shirt and we still talk about it:)

We also had a bunch of fun practices like goof around practices where we made obstacle courses with the mats, forts (ours was called the glacier/ fort ICE for obvious reasons;)) we also made our own routines and competed against each other of course you have the one that takes it seriously and the one that goofs off. And we played freeze tag (haha just noticed how ironic that is) we also play the chain game by hooking onto one person in the gym til we can get as many people hooked as we can.

This sounds kinda stupid but it was actually pretty fun we planked and owled after a good routine

I don't know if any other team does this but we mess around a lot right before we go on the floor like we act like 5 yr olds. We will screech the music whether it's someone else's or for waiting purposes. We dead leg and table top each other all the time. Probably not the best idea but some of the littler ones do front walkovers and back walkovers. Our coach gets really crazy the bigger the comp the crazier which adds to how crazy we are. Idk we really bond back there? We do the weirdest most spontaneous stuff that I don't think any other team does. If I told you 1/2 the things we do and say you probably ask how do we perform after all that?

I love my ice family! So sad the seasons almost over:(
 
ask your owner if u can have a lockin at the gym that way u dont have to have everyone at someones house lol but that helped our team...
 
Quiz night :) split the team so that the quiz teams have people of all different ages so it's fair :) then have a range of questions and a prize for the winning team then have a team dinner and present the prize to the winnin team then
 
Quiz night :) split the team so that the quiz teams have people of all different ages so it's fair :) then have a range of questions and a prize for the winning team then have a team dinner and present the prize to the winnin team then

You could also do a quiz activity where one person is the moderator (usually the Team Mom or coach) and the questions are about each of the team members. Example, "When is Janie's birthday?" or "Who is Johnny's celebrity crush?" Whoever gets the answer right first gets a piece of candy. When it's over, everybody knows a little bit more about their teammates.
 
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