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Geocaching – Fun Treasure Hunting with the Kids and a GPS

Interview with Mama Lisa

Kids Are Bloggers Too!

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Geocaching – Fun Treasure Hunting with the Kids and a GPS

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

This weekend we geocached with our daughter and a couple of her friends. Geocaching is “a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches…” with the help of your GPS guidance system.

We used my husband’s iPhone to guide us on our adventure. We knew there were a couple of geocaches in a nearby park. So we headed there.

My husband had previously downloaded a geocaching app for his iPhone called Geocaching.com Intro. At the park, the app finds the closest geocache and guides you to it.

The app found a geogache for us to find. The girls took turns with the iPhone pointing the direction on a compass.

Eventually you usually go off the path. (If they were on the path, people who didn’t know about the game might take them.) Then you follow the directions until you (hopefully) find the cache. The two we found today were in small plastic tubs. You’re supposed to sign the log that you find inside the tub. There are also trinkets inside the tub. You’re supposed to leave a trinket and you can take a trinket in return. We made sure all the girls had trinkets to exchange.

It was a lot of fun!

We had tried this last weekend in a more public park and never found the geocaches. Our theory is that people who didn’t know how the game might have found the caches because it was a more public place and took them. The game seems to work better in larger parks with more vegetation.

If you have a regular GPS system you can go to geocache.com and type in the zip code for the area you are going to. Then you can find different geocaches nearby. Pick one and find hints for finding it. I think it will give you the final coordinates too. You’ll need to sign up and read all about it!

Have fun!

Mama Lisa

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Posted in Countries & Cultures, Games, Geocaching, Kids and Technology, Mama Lisa, Parenting, Photos, Traveling with Kids, USA | 2 Comments »

Interview with Mama Lisa

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

I recently did an interview with PeopleJam about Mama Lisa’s World. I was asked questions ranging from…

“What are the benefits of exposing children to nursery rhymes and songs outside of their own culture?”

To…

“What inspired you to create a site catered to children’s songs from around the globe?”

If you’d like to read more, you can check out the interview online now!

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Posted in Kids and Technology, Mama Lisa, USA | No Comments »

Kids Are Bloggers Too!

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

Guest blogger, Jason Pomerantz, of Fiddle and Burn, writes about technology for kids.

Everyone knows that when kids become interested in something, watch out! Before long, they’ll turn themselves into the world’s greatest experts on whatever it is they’re focused on.

For the past year or two, my son Calvin (currently 14) has been a fan of the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. In Magic, players buy packs of cards which each contain spells of various powers. They build themselves a deck from their collection and ‘duel’ with opponents.

I noticed that Calvin was spending more and more of his free time studying cards on the internet, rebuilding decks, even designing cards of his own. His close friend Zach shared his obsession and the two of them could duel for hours.

I knew he was having fun, so I was all for it, but since I’m an adult and a dad, I couldn’t help thinking that there must be more productive ways for him to be spending his time.

Then it occurred to me that there was a way he could harness all this energy, while having even more fun: He and Zach could blog about the game!

When I mentioned it, they were enthusiastic, so I got to work setting it up.

There are many popular blogging tools out there. Two of the best (both free) are Wordpress and Blogger. They take a little technical know-how to get started, but nothing too overwhelming. The initial set-up isn’t that much more difficult then installing a word processor program.

Calvin and Zach call their blog Dragon Guardians. They’ve been faithfully at it for almost half a year now. It’s got them researching, writing, and learning technology. All while they’ve built an audience of dozens of people every day.

Blogging turned a fun hobby into something educational (shh… don’t tell them). Plus, it’s very empowering to learn that we, as individuals, can be more than just passive consumers of information fed to us by giant companies. We can create the information ourselves!

If one of your children is an expert on something, why not encourage them to blog and share it with the world?

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Posted in Countries & Cultures, Kids and Technology, Mama Lisa, Parenting, USA | No Comments »

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