The Iditarod Race is On!

The Puppy Pound hallway is buzzing, or should I say, “barking” with excitement as we begin following the amazing race—The Iditarod race beginning in Anchorage, Alaska. For those that may not be familiar with the history of this race, it all started back in 1925 when the town of Nome, Alaska had a terrible outbreak of diphtheria. Many children’s lives were in danger. The serum that would save the children was in Anchorage, 674 miles away! It would take too long for the medicine to arrive, so dogsled teams started a relay with the serum. Each team went a distance with the serum and then handed it off to the next dog sled team. A dog named Balto was on the final team that brought the serum into Nome. He and his musher Gunnar are famous for delivering the medicine.

Today, the Iditarod race is held annually to honor this remarkable event. In first grade, we each choose a musher (the person in charge of the dogsled team) to follow throughout the race and cheer on as they move to and from each checkpoint along the route. 

We have created an Iditarod journal to track our musher’s progress. We also researched our musher with our buddies last week. We found out our musher’s hometown, age and favorite activities. Now our buddies can cheer on the mushers too!

Each student has a husky they designed to move across the checkpoints in our hallway to track their current musher’s location. We check each day at snack time while the race is being held. They have to locate their musher by the musher’s bib number.

The students then will highlight the trail in their folders so they know which checkpoint their musher has moved to that day.

We also can’t forget about Balto! The students will be creating a project that will be on display at Open House. We acted as though WE were mushers on the Iditarod trail with our dog Balto, and we made our own biography to share facts and information about ourselves.

The race began yesterday, Sunday, March 4^th. The race ends when the final dog sled team crosses the finish line in Nome, Alaska. We can’t wait to see how our mushers do along the trail, and check the website daily for updates, pictures and informational videos of the mushers’ journeys!

Mush!