Kids And Caching

[+Kidatheart]

Both my kids ages 3 tomarrow 4, and 6 love to go treasure hunting. Lets face it, at that age being able to find something hidden with the possibility of trading something . . . They LOVE it!!!!!!!!! My 6 year old has even taken time to buy a M&M container and put camo tape around it to hide it. He even has a pen, asked for some pins from me to put into it and wants me to print out a log sheet. At age six he seems to have the idea of finding and hiding down. Right now he is just waiting for the final snow to go away and then to place the cache, which he even has an area he wants to look at putting it at. A friends son age 16 also likes to go out with me and the kids when we go down by his house. I guess my kids and I are lucky that my wife likes to see us get out.

 

For those kids that the parents just don't get it, well. . . neither do my parents, but who cares.

[+thicketsruby]

We just started Gc the other day. My two teenage daughters bought the gps unit for this purpose. We've found a few caches so far and last night we took them, and 5 of their cousins out at 10:30 to find a couple of caches. Every kid there loved it. They all want to do it again. My own kids are so excited they are making their own cache to hide this week. Have a great day,Tabatha

[rocketmann]

I don't have any kids (after all I'm only 15!) but I'm in a boy scout group and take the guys cacheing sometimes. The kids in 5, 6, 7, grade can't get enough of it. One of them even got a GPS for christmas and is starting to cache.

[Pennysized]

10 yr old daughter loves it. She is a caching machine. She finds most micros before me. She prefers ammo cans but will take a micro over not caching.

 

10 yr old son loves only hikes and ammo cans. He will turn down going on a cache run if we're only hunting micros.

 

15 yr old son not to crazy about it. He'll usually only go with us to events. He has a good time when he does go on a hunt with us but he'll usually just stay home.

I don't have any kids(I'm 10! ), but I enjoy going with my dad, Inspector Gadget.

--- pennysized

[Pennysized]

Heck, I'm 12 and I'm the one who does the caching, not my parents. (They just drive.) I would rather cache than do most anything, though kids push me around at school and call me a geek for doing it, but do I care?! Nonsense!

I sometimes feel the same way. (I'm 10.) My friends are sometimes like "whatever" and not caring, but I like being the only one who geocaches.

[+Team JSAM]

My 5yr old and 3yr old really love it they gump about the long hikes somtimes but overall I think they really enjoy it, my 5yr old is really good there have been several times when I am watching my gps and tell her ok start looking we are close when I look away from the gps she already has her hands on the cache.

[+Team Neos]

At 16, my youngest son is just too cool to cache. Recently, however, he went with us on vacation, and we did some caching on the way down, while there, and on the way back. He cached with us, and admitted that he sees why we like it. He even hinted that he --gasp!--enjoyed it himself. (Not that he plans to go caching with us anywhere near home, mind you!).

 

My oldest child, a daughter 22, says that she wants to try caching with me sometime. I guess she is curious.

[+kateiam & kids]

my 9 yr old daughter has much better geosense then me. I will still be digging through a pile of sticks 45 feet away and she is opening the log.

 

My 7 yr old son is very into it-- he loves the swag.

 

My 5 yr old whines everytime he sees the GPSr come out. He claims to HATE it. But once we arein the woods he has fun, as long as I remember to stop for 10 and let him throw stone into the creek.

[+Mighty McKs]

My kids eat it up! They are 4, 7 and 9 years old. We really love the traditional ones so they can trade toys. When we go caching. usually we take our time. I read about alot of people who get 50-100 findsin a day. For us, a huge day is 12. We bring along balls gloves, bats, etc. That way if there is a park along the way, we stay and play. I just boughta new GPS and a PDA. It makes it alot easier. Keep searching!

[+ganlet]

Hubby doesn't go. in fact the other day he asked if he would ever get to play with the GPSr himself. I pointed out that he has been invited MANY times to go play with us and Geocache with it...

He said, "I want to use it for it's REAL purpose!"

 

Now, would he really like me to take him, blindfolded and without supplies, out into the middle of BFEgypt and turn him loose with just the GPSr (no maps!) for the real purpose of "finding his way back"?

 

The almost-6 year old enjoys it when I don't go with my cousin and her three boys. The almost 12-year old likes it when I let her use the GPSr (which she is really terrible about reading correctly! I try not to let her use it in the car, only after we have stopped and gotten out. Otherwise we drive WAY off course!)

My cousin's boys seem to enjoy it, again, as long as they can hold the GPSr. They are 11, 11 and 14.

 

I got my gf and her little brothers into it the only problem is they dont tend to enjoy it unless they have a unit in front of them. so with a lil ebaying picked up handful of etrexs for 60ish i can load then all from the computer in one shot and ever since even her 4 yr old brother enjoyed it (i gotta admit there is something cool about a 4yr old wiht a GPSr)

[+ganlet]

Heck, I'm 12 and I'm the one who does the caching, not my parents. (They just drive.) I would rather cache than do most anything, though kids push me around at school and call me a geek for doing it, but do I care?! Nonsense!

I sometimes feel the same way. (I'm 10.) My friends are sometimes like "whatever" and not caring, but I like being the only one who geocaches.

 

I realize im a lil old at 18 to reply to ur post but if geocaching was around when i was 10 id so be out there. problem with geocaching is its something u have to get someone to do a few times for them to understand. also its really only fun if they have a GPSr in hand

[+Team JSAM]

Here are some great gpsr for the kids. eBay

[+Team_Spirit]

Our kids (12,9,4) are *totally* hooked. We've been reading/learning about it since December but didn't actually go out hunting til last week. And now they're practically obsessed with it. If we're not actually out caching they are browsing caches online, planning their own future hides, or thinking up ideas for tracking bugs.

 

A couple days ago we decided to go have a picnic at the park, and our 4 year old said "OK but we can only go to a park where there are slides and geocaches." LOL! She never used to be so picky! And our boys are so goofy, everytime we drive somewhere they keep insisting we detour and stop at all kinds of crazy places because they are sure there is a geocache hidden there, and if not, there should be. They've also informed me that when we travel to Grandpa's for Easter dinner on Saturday that we're going geocaching as soon as we're done eating, with or without Grandpa and the rest of the family. Sure...we'll see how that goes.

 

They do like to trade items, but I think for them it's mostly about the hunt. (These are the same kids who will fill and hide little plastic Easter eggs year-round for each other to find.)

 

We also have a 15 year old who says she is interested and wants to go, but everytime we end up going she is busy doing something else....so we'll see how much she likes it once she actually tries it.

 

Sheila

[+ganlet]

Here are some great gpsr for the kids. eBay

 

ok i realize the appeal of cheap gps units for children and that this forum isnt equipment related. but the geko have an accuracy of 49 ft. speakin from experience when tryin to keep track of lil kids its nice for them to want to head it the same direction as you are. also entering the points manually for your kids is annoying. the basic etrex gps goes for 50-65 on ebay, it has both was and pc connectivity.

 

once again only reason im posting is incase a parent is after GPSr for their kids.

 

i own to spare etrex just incase i go wiht someone its just more fun when you have a unit

[+dmeenach]

My 15 year old daughter loves to cache. However, when it comes to crawling into really thick brush, she prefers to stand in the clearing and direct me in. She also is less than thrilled to cache in 90+ degree temperatures with 90% humidity - kids these days!

 

That being said, I dragged her rear out of bed this morning to do a mystery cache. We had to match 8 photos of things in a New Orleans neighborhood to their coordinating points on a map in order to find the coordinates to the actual cache. There were 16 map points that needed to be physically checked, 8 being nothing relevant at all. We spent a few hours doing the cache and couldn't reach the final stage because the place was locked. I thought she'd be po'd, but she was just disappointed for us and the cache placer. She really enjoyed the experience.

[NoriNV]

My 16 year old son went with me last evening to look for our first cache. It took a few dinnertime chats to get him to go...computer gaming is "fun"....but this time I hooked him by telling him he could drive as he has a permit. THAT got him out the door . He is really handy with technical things so he loved figuring out the GPSr. (I still have no clue). We didn't look at any maps or pics to give us help before heading out.

He said as we were hiking through the sage brush, climbing this steep hill, "this is way more fun than the computer and we get exercise". He found the cache and loved the little goodies and really liked the view. We are going back today (the easy way) to trade since we didn't have anything with us and didn't think we would be lucky. He couldn't believe all the signatures in the book and started asking lots of questions about Geocaching all the way home (long walk back to the car too!).

 

Can't get dad to go yet and have to work on 14yo daughter next. At least it's 2 in favor. Feeling really blessed to have a son who enjoys doing this with his ol' mom. Now he wants to design a signature trading item

[+Apple Dumpling Gangg]

We have 4 kids (hence the Gangg name). They all love to go caching. Of course, like amny have said, they get bored with micros and LOVE to trade for anything and everything in the cache. We now limit it to one one trade per cache. We got tired of trying to track 4 trades per cache.

 

Ages of the Gangg:

 

Leader: thirtysomething

Leader 2: thirtysomething

DD: 11

DS: 10

DS: 8.5

DS: 7

 

They were 9, 8, 6, and 5 when we started caching. Due to a building project we had going last year, caching had to be put on hold for almost a year. There was a lot of "When are we going caching?" during that time. When I told them we were going to go caching as soon as they had their rooms clean yesterday, those rooms were cleaned in record time!

[+Savoy 6]

My sons, Savoy 6 Alpha, and Savoy 6 bravo eat it up. 7 and 14. Love to go as much as possible. After my wife died, I asked my 7 y/o old what he wanted to do to get his mind occupied with something, "caching, duh!" was his answer.

 

My threshold of tolerance with them is 3 caches or 3 hours, whichever comes first. Then sibling rivalry and bickering set in. A shallow grave is not the answer

[+soonerdg]

My son (11) absolutely love caching. I took him with me for the first time a few weeks ago. He has a birthday coming up and has revised his birthday gift request. He now wants his own GPSr. My daughter (9) also very much likes to go. They both like finding "treasure" in the woods.

[Wiccan_Amber]

Our family just started GeoCaching. Took the kids to look for two close by caches, both micros. One DNF and one Found. Both kids really enjoyed it. My son (6) is more into playing than really putting effort in, but he likes anything that gets us out in the great wide open.Reading this thread I asked my daughter (11) how she felt about caching. She said "Ok." I said "Just Ok?" She said "No, I liked it." Then added, "When are we going again?" I think that said it all.

 

We got our GPS for hiking, something we do all the time, but now we see that one just won't do because hubby took it to work and that meant the kids and I couldn't go hunting! I talked to hubby (F5debris) and told him I wanted to go on a hunt while he slept tomorrow, he works nights. He pouted and even said he'd wake up early so we could do it together. Then we discussed other caches around the area we could do this weekend.

 

We're not addicted, we can stop any time..... sure we can!

[+G & E]

Our seven year old twins love to go caching. Coincidentally I've been spending a lot more time with them since I bought the GPS. The only problem I've encountered is that boy twin gets very upset if girl twin finds the cache first. It's okay if I find it first, but not if she does. Girl twin, on the other hand, has no such hang ups but is more sensitive to the pain of thorns.

[+demhackbardt]

We started caching in Jan 06.

 

18yr daughter- hasn't come with us and doesn't have any interest.

 

5yr son - all he wants to do is go out and 'treasure hunt'. He likes micros and traditional caches. He does a good job finding them too - found a number of them before we have even started looking. He keeps asking when we are going to hide some too. Whenever we drive past a cache we've found he says 'You know what's there?" or if whenever we drive past a park he ask if there is a cache there...

 

It's great because it gets us out of the house and on our feet, so it's become a great hobby/excerise for us...or maybe an addiction!

[+Cache Rabbits]

The kids all love geocaching. The wife is only mildly into it. The youngest 9g is into unless its a complicated find then she loses interest. But she'll give away anything just to trade at a cache. Other two 16g and 12g also enjoy.

[bandgeek]

I guess its the other way around here:

Me, 17: GAMAP - geocaches as much as possible

Sister, 14: she went once.

Dad: will go when he gets the chance, he's really busy but really enjoys it as long as I do the techy stuff

Mom: I think she likes it, but she's busy too.

 

Since I'm the one posting on the forum's and not them... actually I'm the only one with an account, but we could really make a 2nd called "Bandgeek's Dad" cause that's how we sign all the logbooks.

[+Night Stalker]

My 15 year old daughter would rather play on the computer or chase boys. That being said if she is forced to go she never fails in wanting to go through the cache looking for something that I can trade for so she can have it.

[TeamWilliams]

My husband complained when I bought my first GPS unit, and only because I had heard of this fun sport and wanted to give it a try. I took all 3 boys (9,8,2 at the time) out the very minute I got it. They were hooked in the first hour, and we have been going ever since. The 2 oldest boys placed their first cache and travel bugs last year as their science fair project. One of those travel bugs has traveled 20K+ miles in a little over a year, it has been to Australia, and Israel. We have since had to purchase 2 additional GPS units for each of the kids. (Of course, Dad was hooked after we took him on his first cache). Mom and Dad never seem to get a GPS unit anymore.

 

My husband occasionally will go out by himself and cache and then when he comes home with all his DNF's he takes the kids back out and they usually have the DNF's found within a matter of minutes.

 

We just had a baby girl (finally!) and I have a feeling she will have her own GPS unit before she is 2.

[+Teamcoz]

We just got into this sport and my kids, 7 and soon to be 9 yo. love it. They are always on the look out for cool things to trade in the caches, I can't walk through a store now without them scouting things to get for caching. So far we have only done 6, we did it on Easter, here are my kids and my nephew, my nephew loves it and got it Dad to start so now they have their own account.

 

 

My husband took my son and his buddies on my son's birthday, the boys had a blast. We have a night one planned this weekend and my daughter is taking along one of her friends.

 

We have two vacations coming up and we are planning out our caching days while on vacation.

 

This is an awesome way for families to spend time together. We decide together which caches we are going for, the kids do the decryption for clues by hand if there is any. We love it.

[+Apple Dumpling Gangg]

This past Easter, we had an egg hunt for the kids at my parent's house. After they had a hard time finding some of the eggs (which were spread out over 1.5 acres), they hadsome suggestions for next year. They want us to give them each a GPSr, waypoint the eggs as we hide them, and then give them the list so they can find their eggs. I personally thought it would be a good idea to waypoint all the eggs because then I wouldn't need to try to remember where I hid the eggs!

[+griffinox]

My dad(of Team Lalonde) took my son and I out to get a cache for his first birthday. He really was only interested in the little toy he got, but he was having a crabby day. Hopefully he'll learn to love it

 

[+eaglesfan03]

Well we just started GC, and i have gotten mixed feedback.... My son 10 seems to be Ok with it, he has done well finding them to, i took the playstation away a year ago cause his attention span was almost nil lol. So i decided this would be good for them. My daughter 8 seems gung ho about it, then we get out to the woods she starts a whining about, trees and thorns and bugs and sun and dirt and whatever else lol. My 14MO stays in the car with the wife who drives and is slowly coming around lol.

[+ChaseOnTheGo]

A good idea is if you see the cache don't pick it up, wait for them to find it and (beat you to it). Bring them to the large caches filled with toys. What kid doesn't like toys?