The Geography Collective are Guerrilla Geographers - their recent publication, Mission:Explore, is a book full of challenges to get kids (and adults) exploring their environment and questioning the world. A collection of 102 missions - there are some simple things to get you thinking about where you live (ME0052: sketch the view from a window) and some more challenging missions to get you thinking (ME0008: spend a day without turning anything on).

Interesting, I thought, so set about getting hold of a copy - although it’s available at Waterstones our local branch didn’t have any copies but it is currently available at Amazon for £4.99 (RRP £7.99) and my copy arrived yesterday morning.

Having flicked through Mission:Explore with my kids (aged 4 and 8) I could see that the enthusiasm of the authors had come through in the bright illustrated pages. Both kids found pages that interested them and we have decided that we are going to complete as many “missions” as we can.

This morning we completed our first mission!

Mission ME0072 - well, starting with ME0001 would be too straight forward. Our challenge was to “take photographs of your local area to make it look like a ghost town”. On a Sunday morning in our sleepy village I think “find a dozen people” would have been more challenging!

The kids and I, each armed with a camera set out to explore the village. The obvious starting point (somebody had mentioned ghosts) was the churchyard. We then followed the High Street to the village square and took photos through the windows of the closed shops. We felt like spies peering through the windows and snapping the counter of the shut Chippy.

The kids kept forgetting about the misison, being distracted by the sound of the church congregation singing, wanting to look for tractor parts on the local farm and discovering that the NT property in the village does open sometimes. Then the call of the village shop became too great and we headed home with packets of Smarties in hand.

We uploaded our photos and rather heavy handedly photoshopped on some sepia, b&w and antiqued effects to put together an album of pictures with not a soul in sight.

The end results aren’t terribly eery or ghostly but all in all it was a fun way to spend a grey Sunday morning.

Our full album can be found on Flickr; http://www.flickr.com/photos/little_wide_world/sets/72157623974293876/

Expect more mission stories soon.

The Geography Collective are on twitter - @geocollective.