Daniel & All,

This past Saturday I introduced a student to letterboxing as part of a
unit. Stephen Kwietniak is a "Quest" student who has shown an interest in
a navigation course I have been putting together for a couple years. The
first assignment was to read the Smithsonian article. Assignment #2 was to
locate the website and find the clues to the letterboxes behind Skyview
High School. The third was to print up the clues and bring them Saturday
morning to the coffee shop (Kaladi Bros. Coffee).

Stephen showed up with his uncle. We did a "compass class" for 30 minutes,
then drove out to the trails. Stephen had his clues off the Internet site
and with them he found his first letterbox. That was the fifth assignment
after the compass class. He was pretty wound about it and had some great
questions including making his own letterbox and writing up the clues
himself. I told him that would be great and we would include his letterbox
in with the Alaskan letterboxes. It was a brisk morning walk of about a
mile and a half, we saw spruce grouse and had a very good time. Mary Ellen
and the three girls went along as well.

He will now make a quadrant to find latitude, then read "Longitude" a great
book, then get into other aspects of navigation. The magnetic compass is
where we started and this exercise provided a great activity to use what
was learned, with the history behind it in the article.

This was a great exercise and Stephen was a very good subject to try this
out on. Next year we will probably have the entire 8th grade finding
letterboxes.

Has anyone approached Brunton, Silva or any other compass company about
students getting some break when they purchase a compass?

Anyway, keep young people in mind like you are. The web site is truly a
great one, easy to use, great maps, the whole thing is very well done.


Best regards

Bob & Mary Ellen Summer
Soldotna, Alaska


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