I share your thoughts on getting together before the chaos begins...we have a lot of newly involved (I'm so thrilled) people on our board this year and I want to break the ice and get everyone working as a team right away, so everyone will feel free to speak up, ask for help, share ideas, etc. Last year, we meet at the President's house, so we could get comfortable and kick off our shoes. She had a list of questions, kind of like an personal interview, like where you were born, how many kids you have, your initials, favorite book, Tv show, hobbies, etc and you had to go around the group to find as many matches with another person that you could, and whoever matched the most, got some little trinket prize, but we all got to know each other. We also shared our favorite thing about our school and our least favorite thing. by the end of the meeting, we had all made new friends.

Our PTO board is planning to have a day-long retreat to take time to thoroughly discuss our vision, goals, and ideas about PTO. We never seem to have enough time to step back and take a hard look at what we're doing and why we're doing it during our monthly meetings. There's simply not enough time! Has anyone out there ever done something like this? I'm looking for ideas about how to structure the day and some fun activities we can do to break up the day. Thanks!