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The Arts
I have spent a great deal of time getting to know our 2016 Iditarod mushers this year. My special focus has been to share the stories of the rookie mushers, and their personal journey to the starting line. Like many teachers we have a poetry unit each year, but I wanted to find an Iditarod …
One of the special benefits of the Jr. Iditarod is that the young mushers bond with each other in a unique and lasting way. In the woods at Yentna Station, after taking great care of their dogs for the night, they bonded over a campfire and shared trail stories. It was remarkable to see, …
What do mushers see on the trail? In art classes, the Iditarod and the study of Alaska and the Arctic have been a special project this year. The students at Eanes Elementary School researched the geographic landscape and animals found along the trail and created amazing clay dioramas to represent what they found. The …
The Iditarod Summer Camp for Teachers is a remarkable opportunity to meet mushers at the volunteer picnic as they sign the dotted line and enter the Last Great Race on Earth®. I had the pleasure of meeting rookie musher Mary Helwig that day. I remember Mary casually mentioning to me that she had lost …
As the year comes to a close, we have been organizing, cleaning up, and preparing our classroom for the new year. One of these tasks involves bringing down our Iditarod calendar from the wall. Old calendars can be recycled into a fantastic art project I like to call “stretched art” using basic art supplies and …
The 2016 Iditarod class has been learning about mixtures and solutions in our science class, and I wanted to try combining our demonstrations and experiments with our amazing connection to Alaska this year. I decided to bring my fascination with the aurora borealis to class and combine it with some science magic, a good book, and a …
What is a parky? A parky is quite simply, the northern term for a parka. In the Aleutian Islands the word simply means “animal skin”. They are longer coats with a hood, usually lined with fur. Most are decorated with lovely fabrics and decorative trim. I remember seeing many parkys in the winter in Alaska, and wanting …
In Texas, we love our symbols. The famous “Lone Star” is a symbol that is easily recognizable by just about anyone, young and old. In our state social studies standards in fourth grade, we dig a little deeper into the symbolism and start to really understand our history and what those symbols we see and …
At 10:00 a.m., Rob Cooke pulled his hook at the starting the line and the 2015 Iditarod was officially underway. Every 2-minutes mushers and their dogs began their long journey to Nome. The last team to leave Fairbanks was an unofficial team. Dean Osmar, 1984 Iditarod champion, is escorting a Google Earth representative along part …
We summed up our year of Iditarod fun the same way we started it… with the Quilt. If you remember, our class hosted one of the Iditarod Travelling Quits. You can read that original post here: LINK To summarize our experiences, we decided to create our own quilt square to be added to a new …