Getting kids interested in looking at old buildings?

[Nigel Watts]

If any of you have difficulty getting your kids interested in going for walks and looking at old buildings this might be a solution. It is certainly starting to work for my 11 year-old.

Geocaching http://www.geocaching.com is a kind of treasure hunting game which is completely free, unless you become so hooked you want to pay for a premium membership. It was recommended to us by a former nanny as a way to combine playing on the computer with getting out doors and exploring.

The idea is to use a combination of a GPS reference and clues to find hidden objects in public places (containers of various sizes) and log them - both by signing the physical logs contained inside and registering the find on the computer. Larger containers might contain small toys, which you can swap, or a "trackable" object - one with a unique reference code which you can look up on the internet to see where it has come from and how it wants to continue its journey. The beauty of the game, and why it can be played for free, is that the hidden objects themselves and their contents are created by other players. Many have been placed to follow a certain theme such as historic churches or, in London for example, to track the course of a long buried river.

I have become rather hooked on it myself. We are still newbies though with only 67 finds so far.

 

[Penners]

Thank you for that, Nigel. I've passed it on to our offspring, with a suggestion that they might like to try it out with the grandchildren.

I'm a bit ignorant about GPS - does an ordinary car sat-nav work on Geocaching?

 

[robgil]

Not unless you can input coordinates. The roadangel adventurer or the one model below it can run os maps from memory map , might prove useful.

 

[middi]

Last year I invited my sister to visit us together with her husband and 10&11 yr old children ( from Italy) to visit us for a couple of weeks.
Whilst driving them through one of the Essex villages on the way from the airport, the oldest daughter shouted " MUM, MUM THEY ARE STILL BUILDING HOUSES OUT OF STRAW IN ENGLAND".
I thought "you ignorant little so and so " and threatened to take her back to the airport.

I gave her an history lesson instead, which she appreciated, by explaining that people are not still building the lived in" trulli" from the Puglia region of Italy or knocking down the Colosseum just because it is not used any more.

Middi