{The Great GPS Easter Basket Hunt}

Real life learning on Easter?

Sometimes I like being the chauffeur. I like to have our son tell me how to get home from my parents’ house or give me turn by turn directions to the store. In a British accent I ask, “Where to now, young master?” It’s good directional practice, gives our son a sense of place within our community and makes us laugh. A lot. “No, your other left!”

We’ve also had a lot of fun with our geocaching field trips this year. I knew I wanted to combine those two activities in some way for Easter. I came up with an epic Easter egg hunt using GPS coordinates.

Here’s the catch. You have to be willing to go out and hide the eggs the night before and then know you’ll be up and driving around at the crack of dawn in your pajamas. Easter morning. 

Supplies

If you’re up for the challenge, here’s what you’ll need:

• Plastic eggs
• Paper and markers or word processor and a printer
• Smartphone with Google Maps installed or a GPS unit
• Filled Easter basket
• PATIENCE

Getting Started

1. Decide where you’ll hide the eggs. I chose locations meaningful to our son; places like his school, favorite restaurant, the closest park.
2. The last location should be where your child will find the Easter basket.
3. Look up the coordinates for those locations using Google Maps on a desktop computer (won’t work on a phone). Search for the location. Right click the map pin and click “what’s here?”.   
4. Type or write up each of the coordinates.
5. Put one set of coordinates in each egg. 
6. Write or type a letter of instructions. Possibly from the Easter Bunny. 
7. The night before, drive around like a mad woman hiding the eggs containing the coordinates at the designated places. The trick will be to hide it well enough that no one will find them overnight, but not so well that the kiddos can’t find them the next day.
8. Wait (im)patiently for the big day to arrive.

Easter Morning

We’ve never done this before. Here’s how I plan for the egg hunt to go. After P wakes us up, we’ll work together to type the coordinates from the letter in the Google Maps app on my phone. We’ll pile in the car and wait for P’s driving instructions to the first egg. Once he finds the egg, he’ll enter the next coordinates.  He’ll continue this (or have a major frustration meltdown) until we arrive at the last set of coordinates leading to his Easter basket.

That’s the plan. The backup plan is to receive a well-timed text from the Easter Bunny revealing the location of the Easter Basket.

Maybe you’ll just want to wait and see how it goes for us? Maybe you read all this and thought decided to see how it works out for us. I can see that. Sometimes it’s smarter to let someone else iron out the wrinkles of a new idea. Check back after Easter to see how it worked out for us.

Happy Easter!

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