Iditarod Time

It's Iditarod time again! My kids LOVE learning about the Iditarod, and this year, they pulled out all their sled dog gear in full force! The race isn't until March 1st, but we start early, and do a little snippet once a week. They started the beginning of January by making their map Alaska and tracing the trail and checkpoints while drawing rivers and mountains. Good map work! They learned about relief maps, legends, and all around just had a great time learning. Of course, the highlight came afterwards, when they got to make another relief map out of cookie dough, using chocolate chips as mountains, gumdrops with flags sticking out as checkpoints, indentations for valleys... and we didn't do rivers... we'll have to save that one for next year! Anyway, our whole family enjoyed these creations... although I was sick afterwards when I realized that I didn't get any pictures of their cookies! I'll have to implant that in my brain for next year!

Now, we've chosen mushers to follow, and James is writing letters to them. Great writing lesson! Glenn and James have each chosen one rookie and one veteran to follow. And I chose Gary Paulson and Rachael Scdoris, since we've read their books last year, "Winterdance" and "No End in Sight." "Winterdance" is quite entertaining to read with great stories, even if it isn't written in the best English, and needed a little editing for the little ones! But truly fantastic stories! And "No End in Sight" truly is remarkable... can you imagine running in the toughest sled dog race being legally blind???? We're all excited that they are running this year! Right now we're reading "Yukon Quest" which is about the Yukon Sled Dog Race. It's good so far... we'll let you know how it finishes up.

As you can see from the picture, the boys most favorite thing to do after our lessons, is to harness up all of our stuffed dogs, make a sled out of a blanket, add their sleeping bags to their sleds, add a little stuffing to look like snow, pull on their snow boots, heavy jackets, and goggles, and MUSH!

In fact, last Sunday Glenn had to give a talk about being a Child of God, and knowing that God has a plan for me. Well, he related what he's learned about the Iditarod race, and how each of the mushers has a map they need to follow to get to Nome, and related it to the map we have of the Plan of Happiness that our Heavenly Father has given to us. And then paralleled how we all have mountains to go over, and may make wrong turns, but if we follow the Holy Ghost, we can make the right choices so we can live with our Heavenly Father again, and reach Nome! He did such a fantastic job with it! And loved showing off his map of Alaska!

Well, this post is the test to see how well the pictures turn out on the web page.