On Monday we explored how GPS units work by watching a short video on Brainpop and then going outside onto the school's playground to use the digital compass to locate 4 film canisters that I had hidden earlier that morning. We then came back to the lab to watch the tutorial video on geocaching.com to learn about the sport and how to get started. There is a cache hidden behind our school that a group of students and I setup a few years ago in our after school geocaching club called, "School House Rocks Box". It's a metal lunchbox that is hidden in the woods behind our school. It's perfect for an introduction since it's large enough to stow away small trinkets and prizes, and the path to it is very easy to manage as well. We also use this cache to start our Virtual Flat Stanley's on their treks around the world!
On Tuesday we had found that there was a cache about 3/4 of a mile down the road at our town's public library called, "Read, Read, Read". The students learned how to input the coordinates on this one into their GPS units and packed up for a short hike. They were pleased to see some good prizes in this cache to trade with, and couldn't wait to hide one themselves. When we arrived back to school we took a walk back out into the woods and marked areas with the GPS units of good hiding places for a new cache. We then played a geodash game.
Geodash
I have modified this game a little bit to help with learning about marking and finding, and also to get the kids to see both sides of this game. Each pair of students are given a GPS unit and a film canister. They must hide the film canister and then mark it with their GPS unit. I usually have two groups go to the front of the school building, and two groups go to the back so that they cannot see each other hide their "cache". We then meet back in a middle spot and exchange GPS units. Now each pair of students have a another group's GPS unit and must find the "cache" that they just hid. It's a little bit of geocaching and a race all thrown into one.
On Wednesday we had one more to find that was within walking distance of the school called, "Quack Quack". We saw a path behind the school that looked to go in the right direction, so we armed ourselves with lots of bug spray, marked our original spot in case we got lost out there, and headed off into the woods. There were a few overgrown portions of the path in which we got scraped by some pricker bushes at times, but we eventually made our way past the other elementary school and onto the road near where the cache was hidden. This was a much longer hike and it took us an hour and 40 minutes to complete the round trip trek.
Thursday the students were dropped off at the base of our local "Mountain" (it's more of a hill) Mount Agamenticus. There is a smaller cache called, "Kim's Eye View" that looks over a cliff not far from the access road that we found first, and then there is a multi-cache on the grounds of the park itself called, "Vernal Cache". I had introduced the concept of a multi-cache to the students on Monday, but they hadn't seen one yet. For this cache, the coordinates take you to the first waypoint. This waypoint is well hidden, but gives the final coordinates to the cache itself which is much further away. These can be a lot of fun especially if they are cleverly hidden and contain clues to find the next cache and not just the coordinates themselves. I have found a few in conservation areas that made you think and answer trivia questions with numbers in order to find the correct coordinates for the final cache. These are the ones I am most proud of when I sign the log at the cache site and respond online at geocaching.com to get credit for my find.
It was an absolutely beautiful day on Mount Agamenticus. The highs were only in the low 80's and the sun and hawks were out. The summit lodge was also open with all of the nature exhibits to let us look at while we were up there as well, and I asked parents to pick up their kids at the top so that they could see the exhibits as well. This is definitely one of my favorite camps to run, and something I wish we could work more into the school curriculum too!
TrailGuru Map of our Treks
Monday School House Rocks Box Trek
Tuesday Read, Read, Read Trek
Wednesday Quack Quack Trek
Thursday Kim's Eye View/Vernal Pool Multi on Mt. A. Trek
I like this concept. In fact, I had just posted on our multi-class discussion about a project I would like to try with a world-wide orienteering feel. They would solve math problems to find coordinates and contact students at those coordinates to get the next problem to solve.
ReplyDeleteI really like that idea. We are thinking about hiding a multi-cache out behind the school called, "Are You Stumped Yet?" in which we hide small film canisters in stumps in the woods behind our school. Each film canister will have a waypoint and a math problem that will have to be solved to find the final cache.
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