Educaching- What is it?

You're probably wondering what Educaching is.  It is both Education and Geocaching mixed into one. Let me say that this is not something I created, but I found it on the internet. It is an actual course of study that you can purchase.  This year I decided to teach it to our Senior High Students who are part of our homeschool group "Harmony Home Educators" (http://www.hhepa.org/).  Once a month our group gets together for an Enrichment Day.  These "E Days", as we call them, are three hours long.  Two of those hours are for class time and the other hour is for a guest speaker.  We have already had our first E Day and it went really well.  The kids really enjoyed it and they learned a lot about GPSrs and what our Educaches will be.  I even let them walk with them and then run with them to see what their average walking rate is as well as their averag running rate.  I also had them compare their averages with each other to see who was the fastest. 

An Educache is a cache I hide ahead of time that they will have to find.  It has something to do with what I want them to study for that day.  Sometimes they might find some SWAG in there that they get to take just for finding it, and sometimes it will be a note stating they have no homework for the next class. Or it could be something they have to research for the next class.  They won't know until they find it.  Also, the Educaches are always picked up after the class.  They are never left as a permenant cache and the kids in the class are the only ones with the cords, which I give them at the beginning of class.

An example of one class would be for the students to find the Educache, which will have different coins in it from different Countries, and they would need to measure each coin and come up with an average size for the coins.  Pretty easy, and sneaky. Those are math skills they are building. Then they will need to research their particular coin and learn a little bit about the country where it is from. Geography lesson coming at you. Then they report back to the class the next time and tell us what they learned. Speech class.  I love this stuff.  By the way, the running above counts as Gym class.  "Kid to Mom: what do you mean I'm learning mom, I'm just having fun with Mr. Alfred using a GPS.  He doesn't even make us use a book or anything".  "MOM: ROFL".

This is what's nice about Homeschooling.  It's always a teaching moment and sometimes they don't even know it.  But you don't have to be a homeschool parent to use Educaching material.  You can use it on your own kids too.  More to come on this subject.