Angela Ballou has a great article about the hobby of Geocaching, which gives her personal experiences as well as a lot of great tips and ideas. However, I feel that his article is geared more towards an adult audience and I want to share with you some tips that I have found during three years of family fun, kid friendly geocaching. Geocaching is a game that has really grown in numbers and popularity over the past five years. It can be a wonderful family adventure if you think about it right. Here are some tips to keep in mind when looking for a room with younger children.
1- Choose your cache carefully. Not all caches are created equal when searching for your geocache with the kids. Look for an easier grade geocache, preferably one hidden in a larger container, easy for children to find. This way you should avoid the most micro cell if possible. With so many cachers involved in geocaching now it is also possible to find caches that are hidden in the minds of children, sometimes hidden by children. In this way, your kids will have their eyes on your step and will include some good items that the family would enjoy more than just the grown-up item. Read the room description to get an idea of what you are looking for or search for the room using the keywords “kids”, “children” or “family”.
2-Try a bug trip! A walking bug, or an item that intentionally travels from cache to cache with identity, is a great way to get kids involved in geocaching at a higher level. Place a map on the wall of the house and place pins or stickers to outline each room’s travel bug visits. Ask travel bug participants to send postcards from their home state and turn the experience into a geography lesson. Different travel bags can have different themes so you can even have each child something that suits them. Maybe your son really loves airplanes as his travel bug is a toy airplane that visits various airports around the country. Your daughter really likes dolls so her travel bug wants to go to the big doll museum and the participants try to get their doll as close to the museum as possible on each leg of the trip. Be creative and Kids will have a lot of fun.
3-Do Your Home! It is easy to tell what a geocache site will look like from the descriptions on geocache.com. If the terrain is rough and the room is super difficult or involves a long rope, you might want to think twice before taking your family with young kids. On the other hand, there are so many “save and grab” stores that you can find plenty of geocaching just a few yards from your car. Or plan a special day with lunch included. By doing your homework ahead of time and checking the comments other geocachers have left about a particular cell, you can see if there are any unusual things you should know, such as poison ivy, snake, mud, or a heavy thicket that is difficult to handle. These are all items that have been discussed in the comments section by other players and it would make sense to avoid this particular cache with your kids in tow.
4-Come prepared. When we go geocaching, we always bring a little first kit with a band. a> Aids, Neosporin, and other general necessities for cuts and scrapes. You’ll also want to take plenty of water, and some snacks as well. Beef jerky, trail mix or granola are easy to pack and make healthy snacks for the family. Geocaching we carry our backpack with a pen or title to write, some masks or jewelry to leave in a larger room, a journal with a description of the specific cache we are looking for, a water cats, and in our case, two diapers and ziplock larger diaper wipes as we have little ones. Since I only have one baby, my husband “carries” our son and we carry a geocache bag.
We just searched with the baby for over a dozen rooms and found a fantastic way to get some exercise after our son was born. Now we’re carrying our firstborn on a walk, a new baby, holding hands with a toddler, and still carrying a tote that’s a geocaching backpack, to ready to act! Geocaching is a wonderful family activity that we can all enjoy together. A little pre-planning makes geocaching with kids a wonderful family outing.
Report:
- Geocaching.com – About the home of geocaching. Create an account to search in your area room!
