Hope your holidays are revving up smoothly for what, in my house, is a joyous energy explosion.

The starting line up of mushers is pretty much set by now.  There are 70 this year!  It is definitely time to start checking them out, picking our favorites, checking percentages – male/female, rookie/veteran and so on.  Many of the mushers have web sites where you can check out their kennels and learn about their experiences.  It is great fun to follow a few favorite mushers through the whole experience.

Now –

Food for thought – When I was teaching junior high, our Math teacher was also the basketball coach and loved to do all sorts of Math projects (pie charts, graphs, statistics, etc.) associated with “March Madness,” the NCAA championships.  One year we decided to work together so as the English teacher I helped students write news stories and practice oral delivery.  We set up a realistic “Sports Desk” and filmed the daily reports.  We had costume and make up jobs, camera operators . . . the whole nine yards.  It was an enormous project, but still one of my favorite DVDs and the kids loved it.  It seems like a similar project could be mounted around the Iditarod.  Anyway that is a whole project of its own and I was just brainstorming so I thought I would share.  I’ll see what else I can remember from that experience and imagine how it could be converted Iditarod style.  Check back and see what I come up with or maybe you have some ideas you would like to share.

Lessons

This month I do have for you three new lessons.  We start with another Math Vignette for December with questions and answers attached, then I have a writing project that taps into Character Education in a Form Poem.  Finally a great geography and math project that I call “It’s All About the Map”and to make your project even more fun I have added a recipe for a salt and flour map to make your projects extra special.  I hope you enjoy looking forward to them while you are on holiday, but be sure to take that precious time with family now – the lessons will still be here when you have finished cleaning up.

I am looking forward to pulling lots of warm socks out of my Christmas stocking this year to keep my feet warm on the trail and Rookie needs a bright new harness.

Still on an amazing trail with Rookie,

Blynne