A cool learning event/tool I've heard about.

[sohj]

I'm only the mother of a 16 mo. old, so I haven't totally gotten into the learning/teaching thing yet; but, I came across this site [http://www.vitalcommunities.org/] as a result of some work a friend of mine is doing with the Upper Valley Land Trust in VT about some trails on her land. Steve Glazier of this site organizes Letterboxing, a kind of "treasure" hunt with the clues in rhymes that are puzzles to solve. They have arranged to link this to curricula at some of the local schools. And, when I went to the site to check it out, I found that they are part of a webring that is about this activity all over.

Just thought it might be interesting.

[Lotusmama]

It's not really the same, but this reminded me of geocaching, people hid boxes with small items, note books to sign, etc, and give hints and general directions through gps, to find them. There seems to be a lot of boxes world wide now, I've found a few of them in my city, and I wish I was more mobile, so I could search for rural ones. You're supposed to take something out, and replace that with whatever you have in exchange. It's coolest when there are notes or stuff from far away, it's like 6 degrees of seperation, some travelers will put in an item with a note attached, telling where it came from and where they want it to go, and it will travel from cache to cache, it's neat to see how far and out of the way they can go.

www.geocaching.com

Ali

[sohj]

Yeah, I heard of this from someone here who had done it. All the boxes were in parks all over the city. Sounded like fun.

[lotusbeans]

It's great fun! We did a little last summer while on vacation and I loved the hikes and finding treasure. Plus before vacation I carved my own stamp and made a special little notebook. I got really into it. I plan to plant some of my own this summer.

A friend of mine does the geocaching thing and it is very similar. Sometimes the boxes even have trinkets -- you can take one and leave one. If I had a gps I'd be all over that, since there are a lot more of those around here than the letterboxes.

You can get maps and more info at
http://www.letterboxing.org

-Louise

[jessicafairy]

We recently discovered letterboxing too! My 8yr old is really enjoying it! I love that it is cheap/free, gets us outside and moving and we are learning new skills like compass reading!

www.letterboxing.org

I even sent my mom (in Key West) questing!
Some of our homeschool friends are doing it to! I wanna try geocacheing but alas, no GPS at my house!