Join our kick-off party for the Iditarod!
The Iditarod is a sled dog race on the National Historic Trail in Alaska. It officially begins on March 2nd this year in Willow, Alaska and spans nearly 1,000 mild of rugged, winter terrain to Nome, Alaska. The name Iditarod comes from the Athabascan languages of the Deg Xinag and Holikachuk people and means distant or distant place.
What to Expect:
All Day: Learn about sled dog racing and the world’s longest running winter marathon.
All Day: Vote for five mushers and their teams to follow during the month of March.
All Day: Pick up IditaRead logs for children, teens or adults then track your reading on the National historic Trail in Alaska, race the mushers, and earn a certificate of completion. (For more information see below.)
Noon: Watch the Iditarod Ceremonial Start in Anchorage, Alaska at 12 pm in the library.
IditaRead Challenge from iditarod.com
- An IditaRead is a project that challenges students (or adults) to read.
- Reading goals are set up according to the learner’s needs.
- An Iditarod Trail map is used to chart the readers progress – reading from checkpoint to checkpoint – Anchorage to Nome. Some schools use hallways in the school building to represent the various checkpoints and students show their progress by moving their ‘marker’ down the halls. Other schools use larger maps which accommodate all participants in the challenge.
- Checkpoints are ‘reached’ by meeting the goal of reading a number of minutes, pages, or a book for each checkpoint. (Sample goals: Reading 1049 minutes, Read one book for each checkpoint, Read number of pages as miles on the Iditarod Trail Race Route.)
- Miles from checkpoint to checkpoint are sometimes used as benchmarks equating to the number of minutes, pages, or books read. Younger students accumulate ‘miles’ by having an adult read to them.
- Results: Teachers have documented that students read more during ‘Iditarod’ than any time of the year!!!
