Put your GPS to work by introducing your students to the growing phenomena known as geocaching, and then start a quest of your own as a student or classroom project for the summer months. Your students will love both planning and executing these searches, while your class or school can keep its own logbook of discovery. Consider pairing up with a penpal class to exchange logs and discoveries.
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/04/042202_letterbox.jhtml
Find out about letterboxing and goecaching! It is a way to mix treasure hunt and hiking, and can be efficient for children or people who don’t see the point of going for a walk, a hike or a treck, who don’t enjoy just the pleasure of walking, breathing fresh air and being outside, but need a goal, a reward for their efforts…… In class, this text is a good material for written comprehension for students who have studied English for at least 4 years, because it deals with something nobody knows about and that the class will discover together. It will develop their skills for global comprehension, like scanning a text for information and inferring the global meaning from a few well selected clues. And then the students can debate about the interest of this sport/hobby….and if they find it is a good idea, why not get into the project and do it in France? This could make American people want to come and visit France!
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/04 /042202_letterbox.jhtml
Here are some links to other site dealing with the subject, that you can use to build a webquest or a treasure hunt:
http://www.letterboxing.org/
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/apr98/letterboxing.html
(from the Smithonian, a short article explaining how it started)
http://dartmoorhistory.blogspot.com/
(history of the original Dartmoor letter boxing : that’s where it started!)
http://walking.about.com/library/weekly/ aa073001a.htm
( with interviews from walkers to read)
http://www.geocaching.com/ (about orientation)
http://members.aol.com/Letterboxr/stamps .html
(about how to carve stamps)
http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/Letterboxing/
(a very long page of links)
– Letter boxing and geo caching
