Geocaching: the treasure hunt that will get your kids outdoors

Looking for a way to get the kids inspired about exploring the world beyond their screens? Geocaching is the global game of hide-and-seek that has millions embarking on a real-life treasure hunt.

On the trail

Parents who have struggled to get the kids off their iDevices and out into the wild have embraced the high-tech orienteering sport of geocaching, started in the woods of Oregon back in 2000. Although you’ll need a mobile or GPS device to find the coordinates of your treasure trove – a geocache, or cache – these will only get you to within 10 metres of the final hiding spot. The experience is really about discovering your environment. While augmented reality games, such as Pokémon GO, work by laying animation over the real world, geocaching encourages kids to delve into nature, use their senses and search up close on their hands and knees.

There’s no minimum age for geocaching, making it the perfect fresh-air family-bonding activity, from bubs in baby carriers to grandparents. It also takes many forms. Geocaching with little ones might look like an ambling walk through an inner-city park in search of an easy-to-identify plastic container; with teens, it might be a day’s hike in the bush on the trail of a cache hidden in a fake rock. Whatever their age, encourage your children to soak up their surrounds and enjoy the journey.

You can also do it anywhere; at last count, there were more than three million active caches in 191 countries on all continents, including Antarctica. They range from chests and Tupperware boxes to fake logs and tiny magnetic cylinders in the shape of screws. On your next trip, why not dive into a new destination by embarking on a hunt far from the tourist trails or see a popular landmark from a new angle while you search?

More than a hunt

Beyond getting kids to explore the great outdoors and appreciate the natural world, geocaching offers opportunities for all manner of educational experiences. Track your adventures in a notebook or scrapbook, making observations about the weather, the landscape and the flora and fauna that you see along the way, perhaps adding drawings or photos. Children can even research the location of the cache before you depart on your mission. The listing of each cache online and in the Geocaching app is usually accompanied by information about the site itself, usually chosen for historical, sociological or geographical significance for extra built-in learning.

Hone your practical orienteering skills by consulting a map as well as your device and using a compass to help you on your way. Some enterprising teachers (or edu-cachers, as they’ve become known) have incorporated geocaching into lessons in science and mathematics (to illustrate the workings of GPS), critical thinking, team-building and problem-solving (to find the cache) and history (for certain locations).

There are even different types of caches to enrich the experience for older kids and teens. While traditional caches are straightforward (if difficult to find) containers, mystery caches contain puzzles you need to solve before you can access the coordinates of the final cache. Multi-caches use a series of clues to point you in the direction of the end goal, and EarthCaches direct you to a unique geological location where you’ll need to observe your surrounds and answer questions in order to log your find in the app.

Join the game

It’s simple to get started. All you need is a GPS device (or your phone with the Geocaching app), an account with Geocaching.com, a pen and some trinkets to trade (think the sort of toys you get in Happy Meals or Christmas crackers), known in the community as SWAG, or stuff we all get.

Use the app or website to identify the cache you want to search for, filtering by cache size, type, difficulty and terrain. Then it’s time to get out there and find it. Although caches are never buried, your treasure hunters will need to search high and low, in trees and under park benches to find it. Be aware of any ‘muggles’ (non-geocachers) that might be watching; this is a top-secret find!

Record your finds in a logbook within the cache and online or in the app so you can collect points and ‘smileys’. Some caches also contain an actual treasure hunter’s bounty in the form of SWAG, so be sure to take a trinket (no more than one per child) and leave something of equal or greater value. You might also find travelling trackers engraved with a unique number that move around with other geocachers towards a set goal.

With a new cache hidden every minute, every day, there’s a never-ending quest ahead of you wherever you travel.

This article originally appeared in Five Star Kids magazine. To subscribe to the latest issue, click here.