Class project tracks 'pets' all over world
JEFFERSON TWP — The third grade students in Larry Cooper's class have tracked stuffed animals around the world. In places like Australia, Estonia, South Africa and France, their stuffed "pets" like Cottontail, Lambchops and Jumpy are helping them study geography.
Two months ago, the class started a geocaching project at South Butler Primary Center with two caches along the Butler-Freeport Trail. It since expanded globally, thanks to helpful foreign geocachers and the uncle of one student.
"As far as I know, nobody is doing it to this extent," Cooper said.
Geocaching is a sort of treasure hunt for adults. Web sites list the coordinates where caches, often containing small tokens, are hidden. Geocachers use GPS systems and clues from the Web site to find the caches. Identification tags on the tokens help the finder report to the owner where the token was found and blog about its travels.
"We watch were it goes on the computer," Cooper said.
Cooper has attached the identification tags, along with necklaces handmade by the students, to 37 stuffed animals and mailed them around the world. Right now, the animals are in 20 countries concentrated in Europe, North America and Australia. For example, Cottontail to went to northern Australia and Jumpy the frog landed in Plymouth, England.
Cooper said he didn't have to work too hard to recruit people willing to hide the animals abroad. They started contacting him on his blog, excited to help with the class project.
The geocachers, who get the animals in the mail, take the animals to a cache and leave them for treasure hunters to find.
As the animals are found and taken to a new geocache, the finders can blog about the travels and post pictures of the places it visits.
For example, a young female geocacher found "Boots" in March in Ala Moana Park in Honolulu, Hawaii, and posted pictures of her with the small monkey.She left him in the park, where he was found later that day by a geocacher with the handle Vaquera. That geocacher traveled with Boots to grandma's house and Memehune Pond before leaving it at Two Wars Memorial, also in Honolulu.One of the animals won't have to make the trip parcel post, however. Student Leelah Ohalyon's uncle is traveling to Turkey and promised to take one of the animals with him.Leelah said she's had fun with the project, which the class works on for about two hours each week. They find the animal's location on a globe then put a push pin in the world map in the hallway outside the classroom.As the animals make their way to a new country, the students learn a few key facts about that country and even have a chance to ask the finders questions on Web site blogs."They wanted to find out what kind of poisonous snakes there were, what school was like and what holidays there are," Cooper said.Maya Nunna, one of the students, said she learned Australia is divided into states like the United States and that marsupials like kangaroos have pouches."We're just in the beginning phase," Cooper said.He said he is working on a grant to buy hand-held GPS tools so the students can do their own geocaching and learn about latitude and longitude. He also wants to get animals to South America and Asia. He said he can see the project expanding each year.
