Iditarod in the 21st Century

The Iditarod is well under way and we are having a blast with it as we watch our mushers and cheer for them and pray for them. Dee Dee Jonrowe and Jessie Royer are our favorites and we rejoice with each checkpoint they come to.
I had to pay for the subscription to the Iditarod Insider, but it is so worth it. We get to see new videos each day (usually there is at least one video of our chosen mushers). The video also gives us a chance to see the Alaskan wilderness. It is so vast and when the camera is zoomed in on a musher then pans out to a mountain range, I think it gives us a good feeling for how big it all is.

My girls each made a poster for their musher - totally unprompted. I noticed last night that dd11 had checkpoints written on her poster. When I asked her about it, she told me that she writes the checkpoints as Jessie Royer comes to each one.

This is Dee Dee Jonrowe with her team.

These pictures are from Sunday during the restart. It seemed like we waited for hours to get a glimpse of our mushers as they headed out on their journey.

Iditarod Begins Today

The Iditarod starts today!!!! We are so excited that some of our favorite mushers will be back again this year - Dee Dee Jonrowe (DD10 likes her because her dogs have pink harnesses) and Jessie Royer and Lance Mackey. These are becoming household names here.



We find the Iditarod fascinating each year as we always learn something new. We choose mushers to follow through the race. We log in to Iditarod.com and find out where they are and plot it on a map. We have a chart to write down the times they come to each checkpoint. Most importantly, we pray for our mushers.



There are lots of lesson and activities on the internet in relation to this race. You can find free materials on the offical Iditarod website as well as at about.com.



Over the next couple of days, I hope to post activities that we are completing concerning this race. In the meantime, you can check out my previous posts on this topic.

February 19, 2007 Iditarod

February 21, 2007 Connection

March 1, 2008 Iditarod

Bib #88 in the Iditarod

Rookie Anne Capistrant is a musher with bib #88 in the Iditarod. It turns out that, among many other things, she is a homescool mom! I will be adding her to my list of mushers to watch during this race.

It was so exciting to watch all the mushers leave the chute yesterday as they started this great adventure with it's history and tradition. Waking up this morning, I can log on and see where everyone is. The standings today can be completely different in a couple of days from now and will most likely be different at the end of the race (which will be in about 10 days to two weeks). It's hard to predict since nature is so unpredictable.

Iditarod

The Last Great Race on Earth officially starts tomorrow, March 2 at 10am Alaska time. This race is a wonderful learning opportunity for our children. Subjects that can be covered through the race include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Geography - Alaska, where it is in relation to the state in which we live, time zones, the size of Alaska compared to the rest of the US, how is it possible that parts of the race are actually run on rivers


• Math - Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc), adding and subtracting time, comparisons of temperatures of Alaska and where you live


• History - The serum run that inspired the race, the history of the native people who live in the region


• Science - Meterology (weather in a polar region), Northern Lights, Biology (why huskies and malamutes are "built" for this type of activity, the care and feeding of the sled dogs)


• Writing - Write letters to your favorite mushers, write a narrative of the daily activities in the race


• Reading - There are several books that could be found at the local library about the Iditarod, both fiction and nonfiction


• Ministry - We pray for the mushers and their safety

We studied the Iditarod for the first time last year and can't wait for the start of the race tomorrow afternoon (our time). We will be following Dee Dee Jonrowe (a cancer survivor), Zoya DeNure (a fashion model), Cim Smyth (firefighter), and Jessie Royer (long-time musher).

Some helpful websites:
The Official Site of the Iditarod
Cabela's Iditarod
Scholastic's Iditarod

Iditarod Ends

Whew! The last musher rolled into Nome yesterday morning at 2:56am. This has been such a rewarding unit for us to do. I plan to do it next year for our co-op group. There are so many activities that can be done with this theme that we were only able to scratch the surface this year and all subject areas can be included.

Connection

We have a play area in our finished basement. It's where the kids can play and where most of our toys are housed. We try to get our children to keep the area straightened up simply because, I have to walk throught their play area to get to my computer. When I came to the basement yesterday, I couldn't see the floor. For a split second, I was going to give them the straighten up when you're done lecture.

Then I saw what they were doing. They had taken all of their stuffed animal dogs (all shapes and sizes), had ropes tied around them and had a box they could sit on right behind the dogs. They were mushing! I am thrilled. They have made a connection and they are choosing to "play" what they are learning about.

This is yet another reason I love homeschooling. We aren't using a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and they are walking away with something. My husband suggested they take a picture and send it to the musher they are following for this year's Iditarod. They were thrilled with the idea.
I feel that, for today, I can breathe easy because they are learning something.

Iditarod

We are so excited to be studying the Iditarod this year. My 9yo loves animals and is fascinated with the sled dogs used for the race. Each child has chosen a musher to follow. We will be able to plot where the mushers are during the race that begins on March 3.

I love unit studies and am able (thanks to the internet) to piece them together rather inexpensively. All subjects can come into play when doing a unit study. That's life. When you wake up in the morning, you don't say "Okay, at 8am I am going to do 'nutrition', then at 8:30 I am going to do 'science' . " Subjects are integrated throughout your day. Something as simple as going to the grocery store incorporates math, reading, health & nutrition, etc. I feel unit studies are a much more natural way of learning.

So anyway, the Iditarod. We can cover these subjects: history (the first "serum race" happened in 1925), reading (there are a few living books available at our library), geography (mapping Alaska and the race routes), writing (write letters to the mushers to say that we are following their progress and praying for them), biology (study the sled dogs and why they are ideal for this race), climate/weather (check for daily weather reports online; discover why Alaska is "blizzard prone"), art (create a picture of aurora borealis and/or made a diorama of a sledding team), math (keep charts of mushers' progress), and health (define diphtheria). I'm sure other subjects will come up along the way.

As other unit studies we do, a lot centers on how excited I get about it. When we are finished, my kids will love to show family members their latest notebooks and lapbooks for many months to come.

I leave with a quote from Charlotte Mason today: "Give your child a single valuable idea and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information"