The Bonding Guide: 10 Easy Bonding Activities

With club chartering just past, it’s important to have a well-rounded board. If you aren’t familiar with your board members, don’t worry! Here are some fun and unique bonding activities for your next meeting. 

1. Scavenger Hunt 

Run around campus and see who can finish the scavenger hunt first! This game can be applicable to any group. You can customize the clues, places, or objects the participants will be looking for. This game can be completed in groups, pairs, or individually. Also, this would be the perfect opportunity to add prizes for the winners! The players will have to work together to solve the clues, which will help bond everyone through friendly competition.

2. Blindfolded capture the flag

This might sound weird, but you will undoubtedly improve your communication skills with this game! Pair people up and have one person be blindfolded. The other will direct the blindfolded player to a certain object. Whether that’s a ball, a piece of paper, or another person, the director must instruct the blindfolded player to a certain place without touching them.

3. Blindfolded origami

If you thought moving blindfolded was hard, try doing origami blindfolded! Again, have one player blindfolded and the other will instruct them. This game will have optimal results if the blindfolded person has no origami experience whatsoever. You can have players create the same shape or compete to see who can make the best origami!

4. Hot seat

This is a classic IMSA bonding game for a reason. If you want to get to know each other better without holding back, hot seat is the game to play. Make a circle and have someone sit in the middle. For one minute, you can ask the player any question and they must answer the question (as long as they are comfortable with it). You can discover some juicy opinions, spill a few secrets, or just laugh at the absurd questions. After everyone gets comfortable, this game will go by way too quickly. 

5. Back Pictionary

In the classic game, one person has to draw an image based on a prompt and the person’s team has to guess what the prompt is. Back Pictionary follows this similar, but with a twist: the person is drawing based on what they feel on their back. Essentially, there are 2 people drawing. The one who knows the prompt has to draw on the other person, while the other person has to draw what they feel. The rest of the team has to guess the prompt based on what the person who’s drawing what they feel shows.

6. Heads Up 7 Up

Although this game is usually played in elementary school, it can still be a fun activity for your board! There are many ways this game can be played. Basically, a select few people (number can vary) are chosen to touch someone’s thumb, while everyone else has their heads down. Once everyone has touched someone, the people touched have to guess who touched them. If they get it right, then they can touch someone’s thumb in the next round.

7. Mafia

There is one narrator that gets to randomly assigned roles of either mafia, detective, sheriff, nurse, or townsfolk. There can be an unlimited number of people who are townsfolk, however, there can only be one mafia, detective, sheriff, and nurse. These roles are very special because they play an important part in the game. During each round, the mafia chooses to murder someone, the sheriff tries to figure out who the mafia is with confirmation from the narrator, and the nurse gets to heal someone each round. The townsfolk don’t have a special ability, but they are able to vote after each round and find out who the mafia is and eliminate them! 

 8. Compliment Circle 

In this activity, you will be creating a comfortable atmosphere for your board. Everyone gets into a circle and goes around one by one revealing a compliment to someone else in the circle!

9. “I Have a Baseball”

Want to test your board’s observational skills? Try this activity! Start a sentence with “I have a baseball” and have fun explaining what happens to the baseball. Afterward, ask “Who has the baseball?” The first person to guess is the one who has the baseball, regardless of what your story said. 

10. 2 Truths and a Lie

Although the title of this activity says it all, we really recommend trying this with your board. Have everyone state two true facts and one lie about themselves. Afterward, try to figure out what the lie is and learn about each other!

Bonding with a new group of people can be intimidating at first, but creating a fun and comfortable environment will make any bonding activity fun! If you’re stumped with what to do at your first meeting, try one of these activities to bring everyone together.