Caching Moms

[+Mommy2Tyler]

Hi! I am a stay at home mom as well as a homeschooling mom from Minneapolis, MN. I always cache with my 5 year old son, Tyler... and next year we will be adding a new baby to our "team" (due in December). Daddy has gone out with us on a couple of occasions, but he definately does not enjoy it nearly as much as we do!

Anyways, I was thinking today about how neat it would be to find other moms in the area who cache with their kids. It would be fun to have a friend or two to go out caching with, both for myself and Tyler.

Then I got to wondering just how many of us caching moms there are out there in the world. Are you one? Speak up! I'd love to "meet" you and hear about your caching buddies!

[+joefrog]

I'd suggest you post your request in the regional forum as well. Good luck, and kudos to you for teaching your children to enjoy the outdoors at an early age!

[+bahama97]

My 5 yr old likes to cache with me. She's not too fond of the park & grabs though. She likes the ones with real "treasure" at the end. She likes to discover lots of things along the way which makes it even more fun for me.

[+New England n00b]

Mom caching? I prefer Hamster caching - they fit in the container better.

[Jeremy]

Since you are a Premium Member you can actually start a group on Waymarking.com for Caching Moms. It isn't a well publicized feature but it will be integrated with Geocaching.com. Groups were designed initially to manage waymark categories but they can be simply used for getting folks together around a topic.

[reedclan]

Hi! I am a stay at home mom as well as a homeschooling mom from Minneapolis, MN. I always cache with my 5 year old son, Tyler... and next year we will be adding a new baby to our "team" (due in December). Daddy has gone out with us on a couple of occasions, but he definately does not enjoy it nearly as much as we do!

Anyways, I was thinking today about how neat it would be to find other moms in the area who cache with their kids. It would be fun to have a friend or two to go out caching with, both for myself and Tyler.

Then I got to wondering just how many of us caching moms there are out there in the world. Are you one? Speak up! I'd love to "meet" you and hear about your caching buddies!

 

Hi, this is the first time that I have logged into the forums, so I may be doing this wrong. I am a stay at home mom of 4 kids. The youngest has started preschool for 10 hours a week, so I have some time to go geocaching by myself or with a friend (sans children). The children get jealous when I go without them. My question is should our family have two geocaching accounts, one for when I go alone and the second for when we go a family?

 

The family that introduced us to geocaching has a mom with a teacher's heart. She enjoys being outdoors with her children and having her older child plan the cache trip for the family. I wish that we were closer to you, we are out west in Las Vegas.

 

Also, has anyone heard of a child using geocaching as a science fair project? We have a fair in a couple of weeks and were wondering about using geocaching and/or the gps as a basis for teaching the children about compasses, longitude & latitude, and tracking. Any comments would be appreciated.

[+HBmamaG]

HI! Nice to meet you all. I'm a single (sort of--seperated) homeschool mom that stays at home when I'm not working my part time job I consider myself first a stay at home homeschool mom before I consider the job anyway.

 

Anyway, my kids love to cache with me. We try to have a cache day once a week. We load up the school books, the teenager drives, I navigate and teach school to the 8 yr old and read the outload subjects to both kids while navigating. Each kid got their own cache name after awhile, and my 8 yr old now has 2 hidden of his own.

 

There are some mornings I get up in the wee hours while they are still sleeping to nab some here or there, but not much anymore as I have to drive too far now to get to any! When I decide it's a cache day for all of us the kids know, because I refuse to cache without my overalls. When they wake up and see me in my overalls they know to eat quick cuz mom's itching to hit the cache trail. We pack the car full of water and granola bars and cereal bars and that's all we eat that day.

 

Best learning there ever was!

[+Mommy2Tyler]

Wow! I wish we lived close to some of you! Its nice to hear all of your stories. Keep em coming!

 

And you're right, HBmamaG, it IS a good way to learn!!

[+DresselDragons]

Hello, I am a mother of 2, a part-time preschool teacher, Girl Scout leader and a geocaching addict...

 

My girls are 4 and almost 11. We started caching when they were 2 and 9. Let me tell you, there's nothing like caching with a child you are trying to potty-train! Thank goodness we are out of that stage! My youngest caches with me the most, since school does not eat up too much of her time yet (only 8 hours a week). As soon as we start down a trail, my youngest knows why we're there. The oldest enjoys it too, but her schedule only allows for weekend caching (except in the summer). I took her Girl Scout troop to a CITO event last spring...they loved it.

[+parker313]

I'm a SAHM to 2 pre-schoolers. Brodie's 3.5 and Mason's 16mos. Yesterday we skipped naptime just to go caching (hey, we got an FTF!). Having the mini-cachers restricts some of the caches we can attempt (I save those for when DH stays home with the kids or when we have a sitter, we'll go out on our own). The 3.5 yr old isn't in love with it, he'd rather stop and play at the playgrounds that are inevitably at the parks, but generally if I tell him he can play at the playground as soon as we're done "treasure hunting" he's cooperative enough.

[+Alice Band]

I'm currently out of work so I too must be a stay-at-home mum. My partner hates caching so I often go out either by myself or with my son, now 7, who has been joining me since the age of 5. Although he hates the walking to the cache part if its a long hike he loves finding the cache itself, and often asks me to let him carry the GPS so he can go and try to find it himself before the grown-ups do

 

Caching has already got him interested in maps - at the age of 6 he drew a very detailed one for a class project for which he won an award.

 

Using GPS and mapping is a useful skill for kids to learn, and of course it gets them outdoors away from the TV or Playstations

[+Bunnershunny]

Hi there! I'm a SAHM of a 6 month old and just discovered geocaching recently! I'm actually impatiently waiting for the gps that I ordered to show up, and solving some puzzles for coordinates while I wait... I'm amazed at how many cache's there are in the Twin Cities area. There are 3 just in a little park/wetlands area that's a couple blocks from us. (My first stops once my gps shows...) I don't suspect I'll be taking the little guy out with me much this year, it's getting so cold here already. But it's a great excuse to tell DH he has the baby for the day, I'm going hunting! I'm really looking forward to next year, I'm hoping that it will be a great hobby to do as a family, to get outdoors and get some exercise! Maybe I can even talk my very city boy hubby into camping (I'm not holding my breath on that though!)

[+Squirreleen]

I've got a 1-1/2 yr. old I usually take out with me on cache hunting. I've found caching with the stroller and toddler a wonderful "cover" when I'm doing urban caches. People don't seem to look twice at a mom crouching by a stroller even if she's reaching into metal grates or pawing through nearby bushes. And as many of the sites are in nice parks, baby gets to try out new play equipment. Daddy seems to think this is a pretty silly hobby, but he likes going out for a hike with us anyway.