Dr Seuss retreat

This years retreat was dr Seuss. He is so inspiring and what's great is how you feel (silly) when you are planning it and how the office felt (childlike) when participating. A great experience where staff was able to get a break from being social workers and from dealing with daily client needs and crisis. It was a huge success!!  

So, myself and my coworker, retreat partner in crime, were Thing One and Thing Two. Simple costumes: wear all red matching clothing (ours were red shirts and skinny red pants with red ballet style flats all from old navy for total of $21 per costume with a printed sticker that my husband made on our bellies).

The center pieces were "truffala trees". I made these with car board rolled into a trunk, wrapped with tape, and tissue paper cut outs on top. Taped together and put into a jar vase. I found at office store some dr Seuss cut outs that I glued to the vase. 

The food table was decorated with dr Seuss books, small truffala trees, dr Seuss named foods, and ikea frames with food cards. 

The table decorations really made the room look like a dr. Seuss book!! We had the trufala tees on each table as center piece, packs of dr. Seuss crayons for activities, yellow and blue folders with cat in the hat hat on them filled with some agency information, some fish candies in yellow bowls, some dr. Seuss cut outs, some play dough (best dr. Seuss character made out of play dough won a prize), and tons of Dr. Seuss books sitting up opened. Each person had a name tag (see below) with seating arrangements.

 

Some of the foods (not shown because they were gone before the pics were able to be taken) included:

1.       Green eggs and & ham: bowled died eggs with ham on tray

2.       Wump of Gump: oatmeal in Crockpot

3.       Duck Dog Donuts: donuts

4.       Buster Beagles Bugle Bagel: Bagels

5.       Fiffer Feffer Fluffy Fruit: Fruit tray

6.       Yolandas Yogurts: Yogurts on a tray

7.       Grinch-Ola: Variety of granola bars

 

The sign in table included a Fish Bowl to vote for best dressed Dr. Seuss Character, sign in sheet decorated with Dr. Seuss Characters and The doors were covered with orange table clothes and decorated as the lorax.

 

I had some yard signs printed, 10 of them for $25 with dr.seuss quotes for some inspiration and as decorations. 

The goal of this retreat was to assist in avoiding burn out in social work field. Of course we did this by playing some fun and silly games.

 

The first one was an activity called: Cindy Lou Woo Vs. The Grinch. This game consisted of a piece of cardstock cut in half, one side a picture of Cindy Lou Woo and the other side a picture of The Grinch, holes punched with string going through so it can hang as a necklace. The staff wrote down 5 things that they are really good at on Cindy Lou Woo side and 5 things that they struggle with on The Grinch side. Then they put the necklace on with Cindy Lou Woo and strengths list showing and were directed to find someone who had a strength listed on their cards that could help them with a need they had listed on The Grinch side. An opportunity to get to know others, mingle, and find supports for their day to day working lives. This was a huge hit!!

 

The last game of the day was “Help destroy the Trufella Seeds”,  really just to leave on a silly and positive note. The staff blew up a balloon and tied them with yarn on their ankles. Simple game: last one left with a balloon won a prize!!  This got really fun. There were a lot of laughing and silly hiding going on here. Staff’s reviews made this their favorite and there were about 85 staff there ranging in ages of 21-65 years old!! 

Games looked like this:

My office day before retreat!