finished preparations for today's orienteering with 38 5th graders; hanging controls; setting up the secret message on the web; printing stuff; email/phone with the teacher; ran the event. It was as fun as always.
Did a couple of things differently this time. Called out the 30 team control codes and had the groups responsible for each one raise their hand. That allowed me to check that every control was accounted for and also give some updates on issues (like poison ivy or a missing control feature). I had the group count down with me to the start, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO. I love that moment. Every group took off running, in different directions, and I hadn't done any work individually with any group; the teachers had done all the preparation ahead of time.
The kids did a street-O to get to the subway, then walked from the Alewife station to Fresh Pond. By the time they were done with the orienteering and ready to head back, a couple of them were completely beat. And they were facing another mile and a half of walking.
The envelopes contained puzzle pieces. The puzzle gave a
goo.gl URL. The URL pointed them to a page that told them what their prize would be. There were three levels of prize depending on how many points they got. They got points for the Street-O, "Landmark" (regular controls) and team controls (these envelopes, off-trail).
I hadn't done this particular trip with this teacher/school before, but I'd done it with Graham and Parks for several years, so it was relatively easy to pull off. The teacher did all the classroom work ahead of time. The teams do a lot of preparation, including planning each leg of their course, and deciding on different roles for each team member, so that by the time they arrive things go extremely smoothly and they can have that experience of doing something challenging, in a team, for the first time ever, successfully.