Our third grade class Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I'm quite new to Geocaching. I am a third grade teacher and this will be our first big project of the year. The kids will hide their caches in teams of two. I want to use a hitchhiker in each cache but I'm not sure how the kids will be able to track it's progress. Should we just purchase travelbugs? Are they expensive? Can we put in a hitchhiker with a note that tells the finder to email us with its new location? A little help with this dilema would be greatly appreciated. Also......kids always want immediate satisfaction. They will want results soon once their cache has been found. Oy Vey. -Olivia Quote
+mgbmusic Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 (edited) I'm quite new to Geocaching. I am a third grade teacher and this will be our first big project of the year. The kids will hide their caches in teams of two. I want to use a hitchhiker in each cache but I'm not sure how the kids will be able to track it's progress. Should we just purchase travelbugs? Are they expensive? Can we put in a hitchhiker with a note that tells the finder to email us with its new location? A little help with this dilema would be greatly appreciated. Also......kids always want immediate satisfaction. They will want results soon once their cache has been found. Oy Vey. -Olivia Welcome to Geocaching! TB's can generally be given a "Goal" or path you wish it to take and for the most part, Cachers will do their best to accomodate. The instructions are placed on the Travel Bug's web page, located at Geocaching.com. E.G. This bug wants to travel around the shores of Lake Michigan, or This bug wants to go to Australia and see the Outback. Generally Cachers will do their best to follow the wishes of the Owner. Tracking is done on the TB's web page as well. Similar to writing a cache log, Cachers will write a TB log cataloguing the TB's experiences while in transit. Take this example of a bug I found: 9/27/2006 You retrieved "Joe Mills Mountain (CO)" Green Jeep Travel Bug (Green Jeep 4x4 Travel Bug) from McCache Found this one on a fun MacMulti - Liberated the bug from the cache and will hang with it for a while, before releasing it back into the wild... When you buy the bug (I belive for $5.00 or less) you get two "Dog Tags" with a unique tracking number - One for the bug (generally attached with a dog tag chain to, say, a plastic car or something compact and not easily damaged), and one for you to keep. You students will also be able to track its progress either by visiting GC.com and entering the tracking number, or by reading the printouts you so brilliantly decide to keep on the bulletin board of your classroom. As far as instant gratification is concerned - That's up to the Cachers in the area. There are "bug-hunters" who live for moving TB's from one location to another, and there are those who will retreive/move as fancy strikes them. Be warned- there are also those who, for some inanely stupid reason, keep TB's for themselves, don't log it, and it disappears... One other thing to keep in mind when having your students place caches - Secrecy. We Cachers would hate to see two good caches get muggled because a student showed their cache to a friend, who showed it to a friend, who showed it to a friend who decided it'd be a good idea to play soccer with it...I know, I'm such a doomsayer... Remember, and tell your kids to remember - This sport is Fun! But there is a component of patience involved. Try looking for a micro cache in the middle of a cornfield, and you'll see what I mean... Once again Welcome and good luck! Let us all know how it turns out! --==MGB==-- Edited - Spelling...Hey! She's a teacher! Edited September 28, 2006 by mgbmusic Quote
+Eartha Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 Here is a link to a Primer on Travel Bugs. As their teacher, I should tell you that many caches have been placed by classes. Yours is the third grade. Will they continue to be a part of it when they move on to fourth grade? Or will your next third grade class take over? I mention this because a lot of the caches placed by classes are forgotten the next year. You, as the leader of the class, should make sure they maintain it and if they decide after one year they are done, you should make sure it is removed at that time and archived, and your next third grade class can place one in the same place. It's a great way to teach them about a lot! Have fun! You can order travel bugs here. Quote
Our third grade class Posted September 28, 2006 Author Posted September 28, 2006 Thanks for the advice. The kids know to keep their caches a secret. I also told them, should they go check their cache with family, to wait until no one is around and to not look suspicious. We will put up a map on the wall to track progress and to post notes from the site. Thanks again! -Olivia I'm quite new to Geocaching. I am a third grade teacher and this will be our first big project of the year. The kids will hide their caches in teams of two. I want to use a hitchhiker in each cache but I'm not sure how the kids will be able to track it's progress. Should we just purchase travelbugs? Are they expensive? Can we put in a hitchhiker with a note that tells the finder to email us with its new location? A little help with this dilema would be greatly appreciated. Also......kids always want immediate satisfaction. They will want results soon once their cache has been found. Oy Vey. -Olivia Welcome to Geocaching! TB's can generally be given a "Goal" or path you wish it to take and for the most part, Cachers will do their best to accomodate. The instructions are placed on the Travel Bug's web page, located at Geocaching.com. E.G. This bug wants to travel around the shores of Lake Michigan, or This bug wants to go to Australia and see the Outback. Generally Cachers will do their best to follow the wishes of the Owner. Tracking is done on the TB's web page as well. Similar to writing a cache log, Cachers will write a TB log cataloguing the TB's experiences while in transit. Take this example of a bug I found: 9/27/2006 You retrieved "Joe Mills Mountain (CO)" Green Jeep Travel Bug (Green Jeep 4x4 Travel Bug) from McCache Found this one on a fun MacMulti - Liberated the bug from the cache and will hang with it for a while, before releasing it back into the wild... When you buy the bug (I belive for $5.00 or less) you get two "Dog Tags" with a unique tracking number - One for the bug (generally attached with a dog tag chain to, say, a plastic car or something compact and not easily damaged), and one for you to keep. You students will also be able to track its progress either by visiting GC.com and entering the tracking number, or by reading the printouts you so brilliantly decide to keep on the bulletin board of your classroom. As far as instant gratification is concerned - That's up to the Cachers in the area. There are "bug-hunters" who live for moving TB's from one location to another, and there are those who will retreive/move as fancy strikes them. Be warned- there are also those who, for some inanely stupid reason, keep TB's for themselves, don't log it, and it disappears... One other thing to keep in mind when having your students place caches - Secrecy. We Cachers would hate to see two good caches get muggled because a student showed their cache to a friend, who showed it to a friend, who showed it to a friend who decided it'd be a good idea to play soccer with it...I know, I'm such a doomsayer... Remember, and tell your kids to remember - This sport is Fun! But there is a component of patience involved. Try looking for a micro cache in the middle of a cornfield, and you'll see what I mean... Once again Welcome and good luck! Let us all know how it turns out! --==MGB==-- Edited - Spelling...Hey! She's a teacher! Quote
+the hermit crabs Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I'm quite new to Geocaching. I am a third grade teacher and this will be our first big project of the year. The kids will hide their caches in teams of two. I want to use a hitchhiker in each cache but I'm not sure how the kids will be able to track it's progress. Should we just purchase travelbugs? Are they expensive? Can we put in a hitchhiker with a note that tells the finder to email us with its new location? A little help with this dilema would be greatly appreciated. Also......kids always want immediate satisfaction. They will want results soon once their cache has been found. Oy Vey. -Olivia You can buy travel bug tags at this link. They're $6.50 if you just buy one, but only $4.25 each if you buy eight at a time. (Prices include shipping). Here's another thought that your class might find fun: post a request here for people from all around the country (or around the world) to release travel bugs, all with the same goal: to head to your school (or just your town, if you don't want to be specific about which school it is). Request that people take pictures along the way. Include all of the bugs on a watchlist, so you can check on their progress. Some advantages of doing this rather than having your class release a whole bunch of travel bugs on their own: It can be expensive to set up a lot of bugs at once. But lots of cachers have a spare unactivated TB tag or two just sitting around, waiting for a good goal. You could probably find several who would volunteer to release a single bug for this. (I would!) If you released all the bugs on your own, they'd all start off in the same area, and many of them would end up staying fairly close to home for months. The kids might get bored seeing their bugs wander around neighboring towns. If instead the bugs start off separately, they'll all be in "exotic" (to the kids) locations right from the start. Sad to say, some travel bugs do go missing. It might be a little easier on the kids if one of the bugs they're watchig disappears, rather than one that they actually own. Quote
Our third grade class Posted September 28, 2006 Author Posted September 28, 2006 I'm a little confused with TB's. If everyone moves TB's toward Glenwood.....are they moving them "virtually" on the site...or for real? I mean...are they being "physically" taken from one cache to another until they reach Colorado? ....Oy! Quote
+the hermit crabs Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I'm a little confused with TB's. If everyone moves TB's toward Glenwood.....are they moving them "virtually" on the site...or for real? I mean...are they being "physically" taken from one cache to another until they reach Colorado? ....Oy! People would be really moving them, picking them up from one cache and physically placing them in another cache. Some TBs might sit in one cache for months. Some might go around in circles. Some might be picked up by cachers who never put them back in another cache. Some might go far off course and go from Utah to Florida, bypassing Colorado completely. But... if you're lucky... some might actually make it to your town. Quote
+the hermit crabs Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 I'm a little confused with TB's. If everyone moves TB's toward Glenwood.....are they moving them "virtually" on the site...or for real? I mean...are they being "physically" taken from one cache to another until they reach Colorado? ....Oy! People would be really moving them, picking them up from one cache and physically placing them in another cache. Some TBs might sit in one cache for months. Some might go around in circles. Some might be picked up by cachers who never put them back in another cache. Some might go far off course and go from Utah to Florida, bypassing Colorado completely. But... if you're lucky... some might actually make it to your town. Here's an example: a tale of two travel bugs. When a TB has a geograhic destination, there's often some confusion as to what should happen with it when it reaches its goal. So about a year ago, I decided to release a bug whose goal was to cross the country, and then return back here to us, and then start the same trip all over again. The TB was, appropriately, a Yo-Yo. We live on the east coast, so I needed a west-coast cacher to agree to be the "other end" of the loop. That cacher's only job would be to change the bug's goal tag to point back here, if it ever reaced the west coast. So I posted a note in the NorthWest forum, and happily we found a willing partner in jcar. Not only did he agree to be the destination for my bug, but he also decided to release a similar one of his own, which would forever travel from west coast to east coast and back again. Our Back-and-Forth Bug has been out for just about a year, and so far hasn't made it out of New England yet. It has bounced around among lots of caches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. That's perfectly fine, though -- the quirky, indirect route a bug takes to its destination is part of its charm. If all I wanted was for it to get to Seattle as fast as possible, I could have popped it in the mail, but that's not the point. The bug is alive and well and still moving, and that's what counts. Meanwhile, jcar's Forth-and-Back Duck has been a much more efficient traveler. After wandering around Washington for a few months, he was picked up by someone who happened to be taking a plane trip to Massachusetts. The bug was less than 100 miles away from us, but we were too lazy to go and get it, so it was dropped in a few more Mass caches until someone went for it specifically to drop it into one of our own caches! We picked it up and then brought it on vacation with us over the next two weeks. We brought the duck on trips to Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut, taking lots of pictures along the way. (I think we got more attached to that duck than we are to any of our own bugs.) Eventually we gave him a new tag with his next destination (back out west to jcar), and dropped him in a local cache. The very next cacher to pick him up brought him on a trip to Colorado, so he's two-thirds of the way home already! So, two different bugs with the same mission, but unequal results: is there any reason? At first I thought maybe it was the direction -- that bugs traveled better west-to-east than east-to-west. But that theory went out the window when the duck went to Colorado . Maybe it's because a duck is cuter thana yo-yo? Could be! Or maye it's just the luck of the draw. Some bugs travel quickly, some slowly; some far, some not so far; some frequently, some rarely. It's a bug's life. Quote
+BlueDeuce Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 Maybe it's because a duck is cuter thana yo-yo? Awww, everybody loves a duck. Quote
Our third grade class Posted September 28, 2006 Author Posted September 28, 2006 ....O.K. .......I think I'm getting it.....I'm better off reading the forums for info rather than the rules and reg's from the site. Thanks to all for the advice and info. I'll keep you posted. Oh......and if there are any "cachers" in the Glenwood area I could use some "in person" help. Thanks again......... Quote
+Eartha Posted September 28, 2006 Posted September 28, 2006 Search for an event near you. You're bound to make new friends who love to discuss geocaching. Quote
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