Today Mrs. GeoK volunteered to introduce geocaching to a group of 44 grade 6 and 7 students, all enrolled in "Outdoor Pursuits" for their 3rd term elective. The kids were quite interested and asked lots of questions during the 30 minute talk which covered a bit about GPS technology, different kinds of geocache containers, the various types of geocaches, contents of a typical geocaching bag and some of the basic guidelines about cache contents, trading swag, etc.
For the last half of the class, the students were equipped with 10 Garmin Map 60 Csx GPSrs on loan from Sears Tower‘s scout troop. They learned how to enter a waypoint and then went off (in smaller groups) in search of a geocache hidden at a very nearby community center. It was amazing that they found the cache, as it was about 25 meters from where it was originally hidden. After everyone had a chance to look at the contents, I rehid it where I found it shortly after it was published last summer.
Part II will be Thursday, when we’ll head to a nearby city park to hunt for some more geocaches. When Oldest GeoKid came home from school today he reported that at least one of his classmates said he wanted to start geocaching after today’s session. Hopefully even more will "catch the bug" on Thursday!!