By: Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)
Over the weekend, I got to participate in my kid’s Cub Scout Campout. 27 kids aged 5- 10 all gathered for a weekend with their parents to sleep in a tent, shoot archery, try their hand at fishing (5 fish were caught!), and work on their knife skills for their Woodchip badge. All incredibly exciting things for a young kid. But they also got to find a geocache!
I’ve been involved in Pack 409 since it’s inception almost 3 years ago, and have brought my love of geocaching to the Pack – looking for an idea for a den meeting? Let’s go find the geocache in the park behind the school! Need to talk about practical use of technology? This is a GPS and how we use it to find designated coordinates. Good manners about give and take? Let’s talk about SWAG and how you can only take an item if you leave an item. As we were planning the campout, we asked each Cub Scout to let us know three things they hoped we would do at the campout, and my geocaching heart was filled with joy at how many kids asked to have a geocache hidden.
That’s not the only programming with the youths of today – BirkenstockReport recently started a geocaching club at the high school they teach at – helping bring our game to a new cohort of players. Even at events I’m attending, I’m meeting young players who are in high school or freshly out who are excited to discover and join in a game many of us have been playing for a while. It’s exciting, and the enthusiasm they’re bringing makes me excited to go find caches too.
As Geocaching celebrates 25 years of finding things in the woods, it’s imperative that we continue to share our passions of the game with the younger folks today. Whenever I’m on a hike with kids, I casually mention there are geocaches on the trail. JagerBar’s friends who have hiked with me before eagerly start asking if we brought “the swag bag” along, and new hikers are introduced to the game. Here are some of my suggestions for sharing the game with new/young players:
- Casually ask if they want to find treasure on the trails. This always piques the interest of young kids.
- Let the kids hold your phone. While nerve-wracking, I always trust the kids in our Pack to hold my phone and follow the compass line. They get to practice seeing distance, looking for trails instead of going in a straight line, and the excitement of discovering it together.
- Keep a SWAG bag for them in your car. Mine is filled with unopened happy meal toys, cool items from tradeshows, and small items from the party section at Walmart. Let the kids pick an item to hold at the beginning of the hike so they can decide if they want to trade it or keep it when caches are found.
- Focus on large geocaches. When I know I’ll be with kids, I only look for caches big enough to have trades – I remove micros and Other from my search parameters. While it’s fun for adults to find well-hidden and tricky caches, kids don’t seem to get the same enjoyment.
- Share it with the parents. I’ve got a little sheet that I’ll give the kids after a geocaching day that has a picture of the Geocaching app icon, the website, and a quick “this is what geocaching is” synopsis. When I see the parents (if they weren’t on the hike), I let them know their kid enjoyed the activity and it may be a great family bonding experience.
Thank you for sharing your geocaching passion with the future geocachers of tomorrow!
Emily Accipiter Stewart
eaccipi
President, GeocacheAlaska!