I ‘m challenging fathers in a friendly way to do projects with their children. I have (had?) a number of projects pages at another site; but I think I’ll start putting the Papa Challenge pages here.
There is an interesting blog called The weapons man; he made several postings about map reading. The links are below:
I ordered a topographic map online; pretty sure it was mytopo.com. I was quyite pleased with the results. I’ve been very busy, so I haven’t been able to study the posts, and pass it on the the children. I did however, buy a neat clear compass, and do a couple initial outings. The compass you see in the following pictures isn’t the one I bought, it’s just an old one I used for the first project.
That first project was a treasure hunt of sorts. I used a ‘grease pencil’ or ‘China marker’ to write clues on scrap sign vinyl. the weather can change quickly here, and I wanted them to be waterproof. i hid them outside at the written locations, and told him where the first one was. The son I made them for is 10 years old, so I didn’t make it complex. I just wanted him to follow the clues and compass to find the prize, which was a box of shiny new nails. That might sound boring to a lot of folks, but to a kids raised with no TV, it was well received. Boys love to nail things together. The box was emptied in short order.
On a more recent weekend, we took the typo map out, and used it to find features of the hills. The boys wanted to show me where an old cabin was, so we looked for that too. We found an unusual rock with round pits in it, a piece from an old iron stove, and a pile of bricks. Then we used the map to follow a ravine over to a pasture, then we hiked back home. the last picture is typical of how a picture doesn’t show a dropoff. About 20 feet in front of the camera, it drops steeply down to the hay field. The Boys had a good time, now it’s time for old paw to get serious about map reading. Looking forward to it.
