Westerly students learn about the Iditarod

Molly's white "rice dog," Rolo, is one of the lead dogs. Mirella's dog, Frank, and Chloe's dog, Midnight, are wheel dogs in this sled team.

Have  you ever heard of  the Iditarod? The Iditarod is a dogsled race held in the state of Alaska. Mrs. Thomas’ third-grade class from Westerly School was studying the Iditarod. We think the Iditarod is important. Learning about the Iditarod can also help you learn about the last frontier. There are lots of ways to learn about the Iditarod.

Our class read books including "Storm Run," "Stone Fox," "Balto," "Togo" and "The Great Serum Race." We learned that the Iditarod is held each year to honor the Serum Run of 1925 in which dog sled teams carried serum to help those sick in Nome, Alaska.

We picked our own mushers racing the Iditarod 2018 and looked them up on a special website called iditarod.com. We researched our mushers and wrote a letter to them. When the 1,000-mile race started, we tracked our musher and his or her dog sled team. We were able to see a live feed as they went to checkpoints along the way. Did you know that Joar Leifseth Ulsom won this year, racing for nine days and 12 hours?

We made our own sled dogs out of socks and filled them with rice. We estimated their weight, weighed them and decorated them with felt. Then we made our own sled for a dog team with our table members and we put all the required things a musher needed in their sled in our shoebox-and-duct-tape sled. Some required items we included were dog booties, hay, an ax, snowshoes, a cooker and a vet book. It was fun making the sled!

We also created our own kennel poster with a paragraph describing the history of the kennel and more. First we researched real kennels in Alaska on the computer. Our kennel names were: Howling Bay, Howling Husky and Comfy Cabin Kennel. Each classmate had a different name and graphic to display for the kennel.

We think more people should get to know about the Iditarod. The Iditarod is a great race! You will have to wait until next March for the race, but check out the iditarod.com site or find a book about it at the library.

Mirella Martin, Chloe Schulz and Molly Stehlik

Third Graders at Westerly.

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Volume 10, Issue 7, Posted 9:36 AM, 04.03.2018