Geocaching

I have discovered an abiding love of geocaching. If you are not yet aware of geocaching, it's essentially a high-tech, world-wide treasure hunt. People hide caches of varying sizes and log the coordinates on the net. Others download those coordinates on their GPS's, find the caches, then log their finds on the net. Caches may be just big enough for a tiny scroll of paper or large enough to contain small trinkets for children. In the latter, the finder may take a trinket after leaving one. And there are literally thousands of caches (possibly a million) around the world.

Why, you ask, am I writing about this on a creative homeschooling blog? I'm glad you ask. Geocaching is a great vehicle for homeschooling. First and rather obviously, it gives children a reason to care about longitude and latitude. If you wish to go further, it's also a great vehicle for introducing the utility of satellites in space. Second, although caches can be found anywhere, it gives yet another excuse to get into the great outdoors and explore new trails. Looking for caches provides a great opportunity to observe the flora and fauna of a new area. Just tuck a field guide, magnifying glass and binoculars into your geocaching pack. Finally, certain objects in geocaching are trackable. I have yet to try this; however, I think starting a trackable object and following it via the net as it makes its way in the world could make a fun real-world geograhy project.

So, buy a gps, check out geocaching.com, load some coordinates, and get the kids out searching!