Mush!

Mush!  And the race begins!  We are talking about the last greatest race on earth—the Iditarod.  Many of you know, the first graders here at Goodrich are a little crazy for puppies—that is why we call ourselves the puppy pound!

Well, we get pretty excited the first weekend of March as it is the start of the famous Iditarod race. We start the unit of study off by reading Balto  written by Natalie Standiford.  

We show the children the map of Alaska and let them see that the medicine needed to save the town of Nome was on a train stuck in the snow, in Anchorage—1,000 miles away!   The students cheer when the people of Nome problem solve and get dog sled teams to make a relay to get the medicine.  What should have take 15 days, took about 5 days!  We celebrate the spirit of the dogs and the dedication of the mushers who were able to get the medicine to the town and save the people!  Of course, we love Balto because he was the lead dog of the last leg of the race to deliver the medicine—he had quite a few obstacles in his way!

Now that we have our background knowledge of the race, we visit www.iditarod.com and go to the musher profiles.  Our children read the biographies of the musher and pick the one that they think will win the 2016 Iditarod.  We track their progress along the trail and move our dog to the position that our musher is in daily.  We know that the race is not over until all of the dogsled teams cross the finish line.

 We can't resist making our own musher profile and biographies as well!

We will be learning current facts about the race, obstacles the mushers are facing, which teams scratch, the weather--sometimes it is colder here in Illinois than it is in Alaska!

So let the race continue, as the Iditarod race has the dogsled teams sledding the paths that the dogsleds team back in 1925 raced over to save the town. 

Who will be the winner this year???