School TB’s coming again soon!

[Grandma & Grandpa]

School starts in another week, and one of our early activities with this year’s sixth graders will be to create and release around 60 Travel Bugs. We did this project last year and it was highly successful, thanks in no small part to the terrific cachers in central WI. Thanks! About 50 of these TB’s are still circulating. Many of you put in a lot of extra effort to move our TBs, post pics, and write great log entries, which was very much appreciated.

Travel Bugs form a central theme all year long across our curriculums. The narratives and letters to cachers are com arts assignments. The travels are tracked on large maps in the hall and tied to social studies and geography. The website work and tracking are part of computer ed. The math folks are looking at doing some statistical work with TB’s this year. The possibilities are only limited by our creativity and imagination – the students get excited with any projects having to do with ‘their’ TB.

Our 2008 TB’s will be primarily released to the GeoWorld through our two caches – the Seton’s Eagle Nest ( GC13EA5 ) just west of Menasha, and Seton’s St. M-M Travel Bug Retreat ( GC17508 ) in Waupaca. Notifications will be posted here as we send them out in small batches.

Thanks alot in advance! Our kids REALLY like this, and we can only make it happen with the support of our caching friends.

cYa,

for the SetonCachers2,
Grandpa Jim

[kansas64]

Hey Gramps,
I would be happy to get up your way and move some of those down to the Milwaukee area. Let me know

[Grandma & Grandpa]

The first TB’s from our school kids went into our Seton’s St. M-M cache ( GC17508 ) in Waupaca tonight. Tomorrow and Friday, another couple of batches of 10 – 12 will be added to this Waupaca cache, as well as our Seton’s Eagle Nest cache ( GC13EA5 ) just west of Menasha at Hwy 10 & 76.

So many of you were very gracious putting out extraordinary efforts last year moving these TB’s out into the GeoWorld. Thank you so much! Travel Bugs were, and will be, a central theme in our 6th grade. It is pretty cool when kids enjoy their com arts writing assignments, which they do when they are writing about TB’s or to GeoCachers!

So we are started putting TB’s out, and are putting out the call to all of our Fox Valley and central WI caching friends – come and get ’em! We’ll have close to 65 to get moving, so don’t be shy about grabbing several. And remember, these ambitious missions are written by 11 year olds… they’ll be thrilled to get them underway, as long as they are pointed in the right direction – even if it’s just a few miles at a time.

Thanks a lot. Grandpa Jim & the SetonCachers2

[labrat_wr]

Hey Jim,

so, is Seton’s St. M-M cache ( GC17508 ) going to be the launch point for all the bugs in the Waupaca area? Any going in the Computer Cache?

Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.

[Grandma & Grandpa]

For some reason, the Computer Cache does not get a lot of traffic. I’ll probably put some in there this weekend, but they will move out to St. M-M if they sit too long.

[Sagasu]

Hi Jim,

Will help again this year and get some to the safest hands and caches possible. If you have time, give us an update on some of the high points of travels, especially for those that wanted to cross oceans and go some distance.

[GrannyGoesAlong]

Looking forward to visiting the Seton cache once again… it’s just a little north of my mom’s house in Wautoma… maybe in mid-October after I get back from a family wedding in DE. Thanks for maintaining this cache & the movement of TBs.

[Grandma & Grandpa]

2007-08 SetonCachers TB stats As of Sept. 26, 2008 8:00 pm

60 Travel Bugs were sent out in September & October, 2007

Lowest mileage: 1 @ 0 miles & 2 weeks, it’s initial cache was muggled;
3 @ 12 or 13 miles & 2 weeks before the cache was muggled

Highest mileage: 25,519

Current mileages:

<1000 miles, but still going 16
1001 – 2000 7
2001 – 3000 3
3001 – 4000 3
4001 – 5000 8
5001 – 6000 4
6001 – 7000 8
>7000 7
Total miles for all 60 TB’s 211,905, which is an average of 3,531.75 miles each.

Current locations:

Unknown 8
In the hands of cachers 22
(of which 12 have been for 2 to 8 months, about half of these cachers have many excuses for not moving them, and many unfulfilled promises)
In caches 29
(1 since January, 2 since March, 2 since April, the rest are fairly recent placements)

Interesting places our TB’s have been to:

United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Ontario, Alberta, Hong Kong, Greece, Spain, almost all U.S. states plus the District of Colombia.

Large maps of Wisconsin, United States, and the world are placed on hallway bulletin boards. TB locations are updated weekly with map pins.

Lots of T.B. pictures posted by cachers, estimate of >200, were color printed out and posted on another hallway bulletin board – our students LOVED this in 2007-08!

Disclaimer: All statistics compiled by hand at the end of a busy week with no high tech assistance. Not all totals may add up to 100%, but all data is from http://www.geocaching.com, our Travel Bugs page.

[Sagasu]

Thanks for the update, Jim. Great project tied in to the school curriculum. Well done!!

[Sparse Grey Hackle]

Jim,

Myself and The Blondie Bloodhound REALLY had alot of fun moving TB’s out of GC17508 along with GC13EA5 last year! (We are just big kids still.)

Good to hear the students had fun too. Looks like a great inventory of interesting TBs this school year. We will be more than happy to help move some along again. And, we too love watching them as they travel about.

Thanks for the feedback and stats on last year’s crop of TB’s.

Why didn’t we have fun projects like this when we were in school?
Oh, that’s right we didn’t have computers then (or much else).

Keep up the great project! Kudos!

[Grandma & Grandpa]

Thanks for the kind words. Yup, it has been a real fun project for our students, and the staff. Kind of a sneaky way to get kids excited about com arts, computer ed, and geography lessons, eh?

And a big thanks to JimandLinda for grabbing the first handful of our TB’s to move out this year. We still have about 2 dozen packed into our caches (Seton’s Eagle Nest at Hwy 10 & 76, and Seton’s St. M-M TB Retreat & Grandpa’s Computer Cache in Waupaca), and even a couple in Coloma, in the Sesquicentenial caches. We have about 30 ready to place, we’ll trickle a few of these out this weekend. And we still have about a dozen in the process of activating…

cYa, Grandpa Jim & the SetonCachers2

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

I might be able to help these as I am heading Waupaca way this weekend. I enjoyed helping out last year.

[Grandma & Grandpa]

Thanks to Team Hemi for picking up a few of our kids’ TB’s! We have about a dozen more completed and ready to put into caches, but we are out of room!

Grandpa & the SetonCachers2 team

[JimandLinda]

Some of the kid’s bugs will be at the Fondy Fall Find ‘n Feast this next weekend. Hopefully they will scatter like leaves in the wind! If anyone is coming past Waupaca or Menasha, grab 1 and bring it along. Hope the kids are learning the 3 R’s, as well. 🙂

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

@Gram&Gramps wrote:

Thanks to Team Hemi for picking up a few of our kids’ TB’s! We have about a dozen more completed and ready to put into caches, but we are out of room!

Grandpa & the SetonCachers2 team

I wish I could have grabbed more TB’s to help the project but the pockets were bursting with them when I left the cache. I hope I can help the Bugs start their journey in the right direction.

[Author]

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