Iditarod Activities

1. After the students pick a mucher, I have them make a trading card with the musher's picture and some facts.

2. I teach the students that it takes a lot of money to raise all the dogs and keep them healthy. In groups, I have them come up with a list of things they would need to use money for throughout the year. After this activity, I tell them that they need to desing a t-shirt to sell in order to raise money for their musher. (They won't really be selling these t-shirts) I had my students include the musher's name and IDITAROD 2010 somewhere in the design.

Siberian Husky Visit

We had a puppy Siberian Husky visit us today to wrap up our Iditarod unit. Turns out she's not old enough to race! ;-)

Social Studies Unit - Pacific States

What a jammed packed Pacific States unit this month! With only 5 states, we did some really fun stuff! First, for Alaska, we followed the Iditarod... I still haven't posted those pictues, have I!??! We followed the race on a bulletin board sized map of Alaska. Tomorrow we are having a Luau for our Pacific States Unit Wrap Up! I posted pictures of the bulletin board display (there will by yummy tropical food on that counter tomorrow too!)

The Iditarod

For the week before the Iditarod started, my class spent about an hour a day learning about the history, ins-and-outs, and mushers for the 2010 Iditarod. Even though we live in Kansas, this is always the second favorite unit of the year. (The first favorite is our market economy unit, and I'll talk about that more when we get there!)

I always create a bulletin board that has a map of the trail. Then I make a little 1 inch sled dog picture and glue it on magnet. The students research a musher of their choice and write their bib number on the sled dog picture. I teach the kids how to track their musher throughout the race, and they move their little magnet along the trail during the week of the race. This year the race ended over Spring Break (which is this week), so I'm looking forward to Monday when the kids come back to see if anyone followed their musher to the end!

I got most of the ideas from www.iditarod.com, like the tracking form. I also create my own things like a t-shirt design. I'll post pictures on Monday of all these things. :-)