Geocaching Meeting Wrap Up

On Wednesday the 1st day of October, the 1st Alcona Beavers converged at Centennial Park in Innisfil to learn about Geocaching.  Led by Tic Tac, all of the attendees learned how to use a GPS to find special treasure.

First we found an actual cache left by somebody within the wide expanse of a  tree, which gave us an opportunity to quiz the youngsters about the tree itself and some of its properties.  The youngsters learned about how some geocache's only contain a logbook, which we happily signed our groups names to.  1st Alcona Beavers has found their first geocache...and I'm certain it will not be its last.

As we were losing light fast, our next activity was a quick scavenger with a prize using distance and direction.  Tic Tac would announce North 5 paces, West 10 paces, etc; until all the boys found themselves in the area where a treasure could be found.  And what was it?  Well, what would any young boy be happy to find...a treat!  Potato Chips for everyone!

By the time this was finished we were in complete darkness, and as Centennial Park does not have much lighting we decided to wrap things up.  We performed our closing, and off the boys went to dreams of finding their own cache's on further days.

As section leader of 1st Alcona Beavers, my goal this year is to inspire the youth to pursue more and more activities that they would not normally get a chance to do, and I think Tic Tac did an amazing job of inspiring everyone about geocaching.  Even a lot of parents approached me and said how they look forward to doing more of this with their families.  Well done sir!

Good night and busy building tomorrow Beavers!

 

Ringtail

Ringtail's crafty musings: Our Hike

 During our hike with the cubs this past week, we encountered quite a few plants - and of course it is most children's basic instinct to grab, hold and inspect everything they come across. 

Not everything on the trail is necessarily the safest thing for kids to hold though and so we need to encourage them to "see with their eyes and not with their hands".

But what to do with a child like I was - who wanted to collect everything they came across?  Well...give them a digital camera and let them go to work, taking as many pictures as they want.  Copy these to a personal computer and have your child pick the ones they like the best.

With a little digital knowhow - which most kids have in spades, you could put together something like the collage I've created here.  If you ever want ideas of great and free software that can assist with this - let me know.  I personally use Photoshop.

These pictures were taken while I took my kids out yesterday on one of our local hiking trails with the purpose of collecting as many different kinds of leaves as they want.  They were my test subjects for the leaf collection hike we have this coming Wednesday.  I was thinking of different ways to make this craft idea more spiffy...and of course individual shots of colour from flowers would make a large difference.

 

The reality is, there is no limit to what the kids can do...it all comes down to time and imagination.

 

If you have ideas of crafts, please let us know - I'd encourage a guest post!!!

 

Ringtail