Friday, March 30, 2012

Iditarod Dreams

Happy Friday everyone!! We have successfully completed learning all about the Iditarod dog sled race that is run in Alaska every year.  I usually have at least 2 posts about this exciting race, but this year, I totally forgot! I am so sorry!!

We read the true story of Balto which details the serum run that 21 dog teams traveled from Anchorage to Nome to help cure an outbreak of diphtheria.  It was a courageous run through blizzard conditions to save the town of Nome.  The Iditarod race was started in the 1960's to commemorate this historic event.

Each year in March, seasoned dog mushers race over 1,000 miles.  We learned all of the rules and we even presented the rules to the entire school at a school wide meeting!  Each child followed a musher through their journey. It was an exciting race and Dallas Seavey was this years' winner!

We finished our unit by watching the Disney version of Balto and comparing it to the book.  We found many differences between the two stories!  We even discussed that Disney embellished some details to make the movie more interesting, but not truthful.  We had a blast!

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