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Iditarod Ideas
1. Invite local search and rescue officials to talk about cold weather rescues and hypothermia prevention.
2. Invite a nurse or a doctor to explain diphtheria and why it isn't as common as it used to be. Also have them explain frostbite prevention.
3. Consider obtaining a badge kit to make Iditarod pins for each student to wear daily, at home and at school. Pins should be worn until the musher the student is monitoring crosses the finish line. This reminds the students that the race is a 24 hour-a-day race for the mushers.
4. Have students list their best guesses of the time - days, hours, minutes and seconds - when the first musher will cross the finish line in Nome. Have Iditarod-related prizes for those with the closest guesses.
5. Using blue construction paper and foil stars, have students make Alaska's flag. Then, using encyclopedias or other resources, have them look up the history of the flag, find who designed it and explain the significance of the eight stars.
6. Have students imagine that they are mushers on the Iditarod Trail. Every night after getting their dogs settled, they pull out the diaries they are keeping of their race experiences. Have students write three entries for three separate days of the race. One day should be an early day of the race, one in the middle and one toward the end of the race. Have them share their experiences as well as their hopes, fears, joys, friendships, expectations, disappointments, feelings and concerns. Make sure they use complete sentences.
7. Design colorful covers for individual Iditarod scrapbooks.
8. Give each student graph paper and instructions to graph the temperatures of both their hometown and Anchorage/Nome for five days of the Iditarod. Also have them factor in the wind chill.
9. Post a large wall-size map of Alaska in the classroom. On the map, have students keep track of each musher using map pins numbered to match the mushers' bib numbers. Also use charts to keep track of the miles each musher covers daily, as well as the number of dogs each musher has on his team.
10. Make ice house models using sugar cubes and glue. Igloos may make use of one piece of cardboard taken from the box the sugar cubes came in, but nothing else. They should also be round in shape.
11. Using index cards and a vocabulary list of terms relating to the Iditarod, make a "I have...Who has..." game. At the top of a card write "I have a kennel." At the bottom of the card write "Who has a word that refers to the person who drives the sled?" The next card would then say "I have a musher" on the top and another term at the bottom in the form of a question. Play continues until all students have read their cards. The last card should refer back to the first card read.
12. Check into the possibility of Norwest/Vern Halter working with teachers in the schools that Vern visits to sponsor a Name the Litter contest. Students could come up with groups of names to name the next litter of pups born at Vern and Susan's Dream a Dream Dog Farm. Vern and Susan could announce the winners while on their tour after the race. Perhaps one day when the children are older and hear that Vern has won the race, they might recognize the dog names as those selected by them or their classmates.
For more information about any of these projects, contact:
Linda Knittel
Spearfish Middle School
525 East Illinois
Spearfish, SD 57783
(605) 642-1215
lknittel@ms.spearfish.k12.sd.us |
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