Learning and Playing Outside

It’s Spring now and were engaged in some very exciting activities! The one we are excited about the most is the geocaching. Today we walked to the post office and on our way home took out our GPS and looked up geocache in the area. We found one!! I know you have to be wondering “What is Geocaching?”:

“Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. The term itself is a synthesis of geography, GEO, and CACHING, for the process of hiding a cache. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the coordinates of these caches on the Internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something behind.”

Geocaching also gives us another reason to use Google Earth. We have used it before while reading Paddle to the Sea. This time we used it to look up the geocaches in our city and cities we travel to. There are hundreds just in our area!! We are excited and ready! This will definately enrich our family bike rides in the metro parks and will be an incentive to spend more time hiking.

If you’re interested in geocaching, visit their site and read more about it. Joining is free. Make sure to visit their forums. They have one that its for educators on “GPS in Education” at any level. I also found this site with more links and ideas for using geocaching in education.

With the change of season we have also made it a point to observe I’s tree for his Nature Journal. He took pictures and noticed the changes since winter. We compared it to the ones we took in January which are also posted on this blog. We are looking forward to seeing more insects, nests, and most of all the “cotton” (the tree is a cottonwood tree). Each year the tree releases tiny seeds attached to fluffy stuff, and the wind disperses it all over the neighborhood. My son remembers it as it looking like “snow in the spring”.

It is so difficult to get this child to write in his Nature Journal, or anywhere for that matter. He will gather items, observe the subject at hand, loves taking pictures, but when it comes to writing anything sometimes it’s like pulling teeth!! I just stopped trying….for now 😉 Have you found any fun ways to getting your young child to write?

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The Best Thing Someone Shared With Me This Year

Being at home with my boys is sometimes so difficult. I live in Cleveland, and in winter months it could be even harder. One of the best things I have found in this last year was the membership to Boonshoft Museum in Dayton, Ohio. It’s a family membership for $70 a year, including two adults and all the children in the household. You’re probably wondering what’s the benefit of this membership, if the museum is two hours from my house. Well, they have reciprocal agreement with zoo, museums and science centers all over the world (i.e. 50 US states, Canada, Israel etc). I use it when I travel with my family, but also in my hometown Cleveland. In Cleveland alone, I can use it for the Zoo, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Museum of Natural History.
This has been a blessing not just for the cold winter Cleveland months, but also as a compliment to lessons I am covering with my boys at home. For example, we were covering Dinosaurs. The Museum of Natural History had the largest Dinosaur exhibit in the world.
To get the membership go to
BoonShoft Museum
And to look at the reciprocity offers go to
Reciprocity Offers
Have fun!!
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