I am excited to share this weeks adventures! There really was not a specific treasure we went looking for, but I found an app that connects the community together by helping to identify wildlife that you find and sharing on the app. So we set off into the mountains to see what we could find and it turning into a very informative, physically challenging, and fun science lesson! iNaturalist is an awesome app and I will be using it long after this Blog is terminated. If you look at the third picture, these are icons denoting where someone has seen an critter and marked its location, with a picture and a description. Is the animal still there? Not usually but it was fun looking for them, we managed to find a Curve-faced Wind scorpion! However, most excitingly as we rested on a mountain cliff face a Red-tailed Hawk flew beneath us screaming into the desert air! The video shows the hawk, I hope it works... It was an amazing adventure and the iNaturalist app really help us learn about our natural surrounding... have you ever heard of a Tarantula Hawk? Now I have and its cool! It is actually an indigo blue and orange wasp that kills tarantulas! There is so much life in the desert, and its a real treasure! You just have to get up and go find it! Until nect time...

Andy  

Treasure Hunting

Treasure Hunting!

In this weeks adventure in Geocaching, technology, and education conglomeration, I have found a new app called TravelersQuest. It is a virtual treasure hunt, like geocaching, however nothing is physically at the location. you just have to go to the location on your map and it will let you "dig" it up. The tricky part is you can only see a treasure that you are close to, so you have to go out and drive and walk around (unless you pay to upgrade your map). Another interesting part of this app is that you can have a crew. So that was our geocaching portion, not the educational part is working on my sons short comings from last week in school. So once we found the treasure my wife and I made a number line out of water bottles and rocks. He then had to plot his given numbers on the number line. He is a hands on and physical learner (like his Dad) and seems to have soaked in his number line lesson a little better (If not I will make him do push ups). If he cant be smarter he will be stronger... again , like me!

Until next time you Scurvy Dogs get up and go find it!

Andy