Geocaching with Cub Scouts

National Capital Area Council s Cub Scout Leader Pow Wow 2014 Geocaching with Cub Scouts Christopher Cooper Christopher@cooper3000.com Old Dominion District

Geocaching to Promote Scouting Geocaching is an exciting sport that uses GPS navigation to find hidden treasures. It provides another tool for the fun-with-a-purpose toolbox and can combine outdoor adventure with advancement, recruiting, retention, and public relations. The following training provides an overview of the sport and includes ideas on how to use it in Scouting to enhance the level of program for all youth. Time Required: 50 minutes Target Audience: This training is intended for adults or older youth leaders. Learning Objectives At the end of this session, participants will be able to: Experience the fun of a geohunt themselves. Describe geocaching and how it can be used to support the Scouting program. Discover new games and learning opportunities for Scouts. Understand geocaching rules and etiquette and why they are important. Learn how geocaching can enhance advancement opportunities. Develop a plan to use geocaching for recruiting. Begin thinking about how geocaching can be used in public relations events. Gain an understanding of how GPS technology works. Practice using a GPS receiver (GPSr). Geocaching to Promote Scouting Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users, with hundreds of thousands of active members in more than 200 countries. It is a modified treasure hunt using GPS coordinates to locate the prize, or cache. There are numerous public geocaches hidden around your community, probably very close to where you live. Finding many of these treasures involves taking beautiful hikes and, perhaps, puzzles to solve. Pathfinding has been part of Scouting from its very beginning. GPS technology provides an augmented compass and measuring system, which is an essential part of the increasingly technology-oriented lives of this generation. Remember, however, that GPS technology simply is updating an old and traditional Scouting skill; the older methods should not be forgotten. Map and compass skills are an invaluable supplement to any GPS use, and the importance of these skills should be reinforced whenever possible. Most importantly, the Scouting s values, including fun with a purpose, are paramount to any Scouting activity.

How Does GPS Work? The 24 satellites that make up the GPS network broadcast radio signals that a GPSr can receive. Once the receiver has received a minimum of three satellite signals, it can calculate its location coordinates. The more satellites the GPSr has tracked, the more accurate its calculations will be. The signals are subject to interference and will affect the GPSr accuracy as well. Overcast weather, power lines, trees, buildings, steep canyons, and valleys all can affect the signal strength and therefore change the accuracy of the GPSr readings. A GPS unit will be most accurate when the user has a clear, unobstructed view of the sky and horizon. In addition, no GPS unit has 100 percent accuracy, and it will rarely lead you to the exact spot. Usually, the accuracy is 20 feet or less and that s the radius so there is easily an area with a 40-foot diameter to search. Thus, once you ve reached your search point, there is usually still some searching to do. Make the following points on the limitations of GPS use. Your GPS arrow points you as the crow flies, which might not be the best route. You may lose signal. Your accuracy may be very low. The receiver s batteries can die. You might have programmed in the wrong information. Suggest to geocaching leaders that they design these limitations into an event to be sure the boys understand the problems that can occur. Geocaching is the perfect tool to illustrate the need for map and compass skills! Remember the principles of Leave No Trace, and do not tread on things you shouldn t (gardens, private property, etc.).

Tiger Cubs Go See Its 1G Go to a library, historical, society, museum, old farm or historical building. Multi-cache historic facility. 2F - Where I Live. Look at a map of your community. Look for geocaches in the area. 5D - Let s Go Outdoors. 5G - Geocaching provides lots of opportunities for hikes with your den. Electives Elective 2. It s always fun to make Decorations: The den can hunt for the decorating material first (and burn off energy!). Elective 22. Picnic Fun: Are you going to have a picnic with you den? Elective 35. Fun Outdoors: There are so many outdoor geocaching games to play with your den. Elective 37. Bicycle Rides are more fun when cache hunting and your GPSr will measure your distance. Many bike trails have geocaches all along them. Go find them! Elective 42. Fun at the Zoo: Visit a zoo or aquarium that you have found on geocaching.com and look for the cache there before or after you go inside.

Wolf Cubs Achievement 4 KNOW YOUR HOME AND COMMUNITY o 4f. There many virtual caches listed on geocaching.com that can take you to places in your community, such as a historic or government location. Achievement 5. TOOLS FOR FIXING AND BUILDING o 5e. Geocaches are items that you can create. Make geocache containers for Den or Pack use! Achievement 6. START A COLLECTION o 6b. Geocaches have lots of things to collect, from coins to specific signature items to just a certain kind of toy (like toy cars). It is easy to find 10 things. o 6c. Share your collection with others and tell them why you chose these items to collect. Many people have themes to the prizes that they put into public caches. Some have signature items which are their own icons. For example, cougarkhan leaves blue aliens or colorful frogs, and scoutboy leaves scout patches. Collect them and share! Achievement 7 YOUR LIVING WORLD o 7c. Litter in your neighborhood is ugly and you can help pick it up. Achievement 9. BE SAFE AT HOME AND ON THE STREET. o We can t stress safety enough for Scouts. Go over all the safety rules for geocaching. Achievement 10 FAMILY FUN. o Requirement 10b. Planning a set of geocaches is a fun way to take a walk with your family. Achievement 12 MAKING CHOICES. o We face choices when geocaching just as we do in the rest of our lives. Do we take the short cut to get to the cache first, even if we trample the flowers? NO! Give some examples of when it is hard to do the right thing Do you want to run straight over the flower bed to get to the geocache location first? Do you take more than one toy from a public cache, or not leave anything, just because you want what is there? You will find many topics for discussing choices.

Wolf Electives Elective 3 MAKE IT YOURSELF. o Arrow point 3a. Make fun cache containers for your den or pack to use. Elective 4 PLAY A GAME. o Arrow point 4f. You can play lots of group games with your den or pack. Elective 9 LET'S HAVE A PARTY. o Arrow point 9a. Use geocaching activities to help entertain at a home or den party. Elective 13 BIRDS o Arrow point 13a. Use your GPSr to note where you find different birds. Or set waypoints at locations where you know birds congregate. Keep a log of what you see on a geocache hike. o Arrow point 13b. Use your GPSr to track where you put out nesting material. Mark the location of where you put your nesting material so you can come back to the exact spot and see if they used it. o Arrow point 13 Use geocaches to help learn to identity different kinds of birds: Load your cache containers with bird pictures. After you learn them from the pictures, go look for them in the outdoors. Elective 18 OUTDOOR ADVENTURE o Arrow point 18b With an adult, help plan and run a family or den outing. Plan a geocaching outing! o Arrow point 18c Help plan and lay out a treasure hunt. Nothing could be more perfect for geocaching than this requirement. o Arrow point 18e Help plan and lay out an adventure trail. Mark your adventure trail points with your GPS unit. Hide caches along the way. o Arrow point 18f Help your pack earn the summertime pack award. Have your pack plan two summer geocache events using ideas from this book or create your own theme. o Arrow point 18g Poisonous plants must be avoided when geocaching. Some of the caches will list this danger with an attribute. But you need to learn about them just in case!

Elective 21 COMPUTERS o Arrow point 21b. Geocaching.com and other website use lots of computer programs that you can use for this requirement. The geocaching.com uses complicated programs to run their website. Use their programs to log your finds and search for new sites. Elective 23 LET'S GO CAMPING o Arrow point 23a. You can use GPS and geocaching to plan a campout. You can easily theme a campout to include some geocaches. o Arrow point 23c. Just in case your GPS fails - Tell what to do if you get lost. This goes back to how a GPS unit can fail you. Make sure the boys know the limitations of the GPS unit, and what to do if it fails for any reason. o Arrow point 23d. Always cache with a buddy! Tell why. Never cache alone! The buddy system is just as important in geocaching as with everything else we do.

Bear Cubs Bear Achievements Achievement 3 WHAT MAKES AMERICA SPECIAL? o Requirement 3c and d. Use the geocaching.com website to find and visit old homes and/or places of historical interest. Achievement 5. SHARING YOUR WORLD WITH WILDLIFE. o Arrow point 5d. Visit a Zoo, Nature center, Aviary, Wildlife refuge, or Game preserve that has a cache nearby. Requirement 15b, 15c. Play two geocaching games with your den. You may need to explain the rules if you make up a new game. o Given that you can theme a geocaching game to whatever you want, it will be easy to create a new game for your den. Use the program helps for ideas of what to put in the caches. Then go over the rules, always using the basic rules given in this book in addition to any other you may add for the game. Achievement 20 SAWDUST AND NAILS o Requirement 16c Use tools to fix something. With an adult s help, you can use tools to make especially creative geocache camouflage. Achievement 24 BE A LEADER o Requirement 24a. Invite a boy to a geocaching event and then ask him join Cub Scouting. Bear Electives Elective 1 SPACE o Requirement 1c. Visit a planetarium. Places like planetariums almost always have public geocaches nearby. If the one by your dendoesn t, set one up! Requirement 1e. Read and talk about the GPS satellite system. Describe how the satellites for the Global Positioning System work. Give the history from their use in defense to our current public use. Elective 9 ART Requirement 9a. Make creative geocache camo as an original art project and use it at a pack geocache game. Make lots of cache containers with really good camo! Elective 11 PHOTOGRAPHY

o Requirement 11b-d. Take five pictures while you are geocaching, or to prepare photos to post on the geocaching.com website. Elective 12 NATURE CRAFTS Requirement 12c, e f g. Use GPS coordinates to find the materials you need to collect, press, and label for these requirements. Elective 14 LANDSCAPING o Requirement 14c. Take part in CITO events with your family, den, or pack to make your neighborhood or community more beautiful. Elective 17 REPAIRS o Requirement 17b, d. Help repair a geocache that need it. Do a good turn if you come across a broken geocache, offer to repair it. Ask first though, using geocaching.com to contact the owner. Elective 22 COLLECTING THINGS o Requirement 22b. You can find all sorts of things to collect while geocaching. Every time you show a different kind of collection, it counts as one requirement. Elective 23 MAPS o Requirement 23e. Use geocaching.com to make a map to sure while you are away from home. One of the best things about the sport of geocaching is that it shows you the best things in an area. Caches are usually set up by people who live close by, and they know all the good spots! Elective 25 Let's Go Camping o Requirement 25a. Hiking, camping and geocaching all require the buddy system. Go on a short geo-hike with your buddy and tell what to do if you re GPS fails and you are lost. Plan a geocaching hike, and be sure to go over each of these points with your den before you start out.

Webelos Scouts Webelos Activity Badges ARTIST - Requirement 9. Make some creative caches. Once again, building clever cache containers is a great way to show off your artistic talent. TRAVELER - Requirement 3, 4, 6, 9, 10. Use geocaching.com to make a map of caches around your area. Print it, and then go find them. Make sample maps for other trips that are further away. Compare you map with other maps and see how the symbols compare. Find the best route to take. You can compare the symbols you see from your geocaching map with a regular road map both will have information you may need. After you calculate the mileage of your two routes you can test them by using your GPSr to measure the mileage you actually travel. CITIZEN - Requirement 17. Many organizations that help people have geocaches there! Look through the geocaches on the public website. Find one that describes a charitable organization, and see if the cache description tells you about what they do. Then go visit the actual site. COMMUNICATOR - Requirement 12. Connect to five Web sites that interest you. You can certainly link to many interesting sites that are related to geocaching. Many of these are listed in the back of this book and include: www.geoscouting.com, www.geocaching.com, www.cacheintrashout.org, Leave No Trace www.lnt.org, www.bsafieldbook.org, http://geocreed.info/. FAMILY MEMBER -Requirement 8. Geocaching is a great family activity. Take them geocaching! Requirement 13. Nobody likes to see garbage and trash. Talk to your family or den leader about all the trash you sometimes see when out geocaching. Explain to them why you practice cache in trash out each time you cache. CRAFTSMAN - Requirement 1, 2, 4. Use tools properly is needed to build safely geocache containers. Go over how to use each tool. Then use all of these to build geocache containers. FORESTER - Requirement 3, 4, 8. use your GPS to make the locations of different types of trees and plants. If you plant seedlings, mark their location so you can check on their progress. Set up a nature trail style geocache course that leads the boys to six different types of trees or forest plants. When you plant your trees, mark their location with your GPS unit and write down the coordinates in a notebook.

GEOLOGIST - Requirement 1. Place and maintain a geocache in five kinds of rocks or other geologic specimens. NATURALIST - Requirement 4. Visit a museum of natural history, nature center, or zoo. Find one of the many geocaches at a museum, nature center or zoo. Make a geocache course that takes you to the highlights of these centers. Requirement 7. Be careful caching! Learn to identify poisonous plants and reptiles. Set up some GPS waypoints at places where there are poisonous plants to identify. Requirement 12 Keep your neighborhood clean! As always, practice cache in trash out. And host a CITO event OUTDOORSMAN - Requirement 5. Geocaching fully supports the Leave No Trace principles. Discuss how geocaching gives an added challenge to Leave No Trace, and what you can do to be sure you follow the correct guidelines. Requirement 6. Participate in an outdoor conservation project like a CITO event with your Webelos den or a Boy Scout troop. Requirement 9. Use your GPS or geocache on 3-mile hike. Burke Lake, Lake Accotink, Prince William State Park.

References and Useful Website Books: Geocaching for the Boy Scout Program The Boy Scout Handbook The Boy Scout Fieldbook The Tiger Cub Handbook The Wolf Handbook The Bear Handbook The Webelos Handbook Geocaching to Promote Scouting The Complete Idiot s Guide to Geocaching Geocaching for Dummies General Resource Information: http://www.geoscouting-info.com The Geocacher s Creed - http://geocreed.info/ Geocaching Description - http://www.geocaching.com/faq/ Guide for Finding Caches - http://www.geocaching.com/about/finding.aspx Guide for Hiding Caches - http://www.geocaching.com/about/hiding.aspx Guide for buying a GPS unit - http://www.geocaching.com/about/buying.aspx Glossary of Geocaching Terms - http://www.geocaching.com/about/glossary.aspx Cache In Trash Out - http://www.cacheintrashout.org/12