If you're looking for a way for hands-on interactive activity with your family, neighborhood BBQ, groups of friends or even organization team-building you might consider a Lending Kit with Prairie Mountain Health.
PMH offers Lender Kits through their Health Promotions, says program coordinator, Nikki Dean. Geocaching is one of three different Lender Kits. Physical Literacy Kits and a Nature Discovery Backpack Kits are also available for free.
Parents and grandparents might be looking for a new idea to help with these last few weeks of summer, a Lending Kit might just be the answer you need. Teachers might be looking for a great way to start off the school year with a fun interactive game and so the Geocaching Kit might be a terrific Back to School ice-breaker.
"Our geocaching kits that are available in Brandon and in Southwest Manitoba, we have a kit that I believe has 16 GPS units and all of the instructions on how to use them," says Dean. "So anybody, groups, families, organizations can borrow them for free. The timeline or length of time to borrow just kind of depends on how busy the kits are at that moment because we are shipping things around the Prairie Mountain Health Region. So there needs to be time for travel and for the kits to get where they need to be, but usually, you know, a few days, a weekend or something like that is reasonable for folks to borrow them."
Dean says they call geocaching a real world treasure hunt ...
Dean says they call geocaching a real world treasure hunt, because you're hunting for hidden treasure - treasure that you've put there yourself for others to find, or a cache that others have hidden.
"There are a few different ways that folks can use the geocaching kit," she explains. "We find the best way to do it is to kind of set up your own caches. So you find your hiding spot, you go there with your GPS unit and you set your coordinates and then they all save in the units and then the people go out and find them. You can hide little trinkets or you can hide little puzzles or there's lots of different ways that you can do that."
"The other way is there is an app or a website where existing caches are listed on. So that's a little bit harder because you would have to find the cache using the app and then you would have to put the coordinates in to the GPS unit if you wanted to use the GPS unit and then who you're setting up for would be able to use the units and go out and find the cache."
For those who are not that familiar with the whole geocaching phenomenon, borrowing a kit from PMH is a great way to test the waters, have fun setting up your own caches for others, but it isn't at a huge commitment or cost.
"We've had people use them from everything from birthday parties to family reunions," shares Dean.
"We've actually gone out and set them up ourselves for different workplace wellness activities. Brandon University had an outdoor education class and we went and set up a bunch of geocaches for those students to learn about it. So there's lots of different fun ways to try it - and this is likely the best way to use them when you're just kind of getting started with geocaching."
For information on how to participate in the Lender Program with Prairie Mountain Health, see the posters below.