You know they love it when....

Remember the post about the Iditarod?

A couple of days ago I was out on the playground at 10:30 (I have playground duty this week) and I saw a bunch of my boys - and a couple of my girls - lining up - each with his jacket tied backwards around their waist - and the person behind them holding on to the sleeves. Um? They were mushing....

Iditarod mushing!

I took my camera out at 2 p.m. recess to capture that for the blog. The 'mushing teams' were WAY OUT in the field and couldn't hear me yell. As they came around to the side of the field, they stopped, unhooked, and I asked them what was going on.

"We're taking our 8 - hour layover!" (A mandatory part of the Alaskan Iditarod)

My comment was for them to hurry up the 8 hours, get back 'in harness' so I could take their picture for the blog. This time they got in teams of two... you know, the musher and his dog...

I loved hearing them yell out which 'checkpoints' they were heading to. "We'll beat you to Kaltag!" I knew they enjoyed the Iditarod, but this absolutely confirmed it.

SOLD OUT!

How about that!

A HUGE thank you to Lacey and family for the donation of salmon ... and then on top of donating the salmon - LACEY and LESLEY cooked the salmon. It was incredible!

Also a HUGE thank you to our Parent Club - which is the absolute best. They worked so hard to make this night a success... and it was.

Fourth and fifth grade students were chosen to be the servers. They looked and acted like they had been doing it for years. We had a crew... a great crew. Here they are:
These wonderful servers served the food being prepared in the kitchen....and outside on the grill...This is Edin and Lacey... Lesley in the photo above, are our fishing family who donated the salmon. Dad, (Chris) is up in Alaska fishing now. Galen, well, I'm not sure where he was when I snapped this picture. He'll be in the slide show, sitting at the table.
As I looked around, I was in awe of how the gym had been transformed into a beautiful dinner room.We had dancers who performed, a former Room 8er - Matthew - who donned his Cat in the Hat clothing - and did balloon art for all the eager students - and adults! We also had a magician going from table to table to perform his magic tricks.

It was a wonderful, wonderful evening!BubbleShare: Share photos - Powered by BubbleShare

Because of our upcoming salmon dinner, we painted boats!

I absolutely love these boats painted by the very talented Room 8ers! Our parent club - with the incredible donation by Edin's parents of the salmon - are putting on a salmon dinner Friday night. Along with the dinner, some dancers will perform and art will be for sale! We painted boats... and they are stunning! I took many photos of some of the finished ones today, and I have to post them all here.

Grab a cup of tea or coffee or something relaxing and sit back and enjoy these works of art!Amber
Austin
Carlo
Casey J.
Danielle

Devin

Dillon

Edin

Emily

Emma
Jacob
Kamren
Macey
Madison
Mae
Mary
Michael
Tyler

All these and more will be on display during the dinner Friday night. Remember to buy your tickets if you want to attend... they're only selling 200 tickets.

The last of the tribe posters - FINALLY!

Today was the day we took the last photos and heard our last presentation - the Yurok tribe. They gave us an excellent presentation... and here they are with their poster:Quinn, Kyle W., Casey J., and Tucker

After the Yuroks finished their presentation, we took photos of the tribes we had missed earlier.The Yokuts: Emma, Mae, Jacob, and Kyle A.The Mojave: Madison, Kamren, Devin, Carlo, and Tyler

Iditarod 36

Have you been hearing names like... Lance Mackey, Jeff King, Martin Buser, DeeDee Jonrowe ... and 92 others?

Maybe you've heard names like Kaltag, Shaktoolik, Unalakleet, White Mountain ... and of course, Nome.
We've been following what is known as The Last Great Race ... or The Iditarod!

In Room 8, each student drew the names of 3 different mushers. These were the ones they have tracked throughout the race. If one of their mushers 'scratched' (stopped the race for whatever reason), then they got to choose another musher. This year there were 96 mushers who started the race. We've learned to read and convert military time to our standard way of telling time and vice versa. We've been graphing the dogs of our mushers - watching as some of them 'dropped' dogs along the way. We've looked at strategies ... tried to figure out the why's of some of the data on the 'updates'.
When the mushers come down Front Street in Nome, someone comes out (the guy in the red jacket) to help guide the dogs and musher through the hundreds or thousands of people who are there to congratulate the mushers. ** Postscript...this is NOT Lance Mackey coming into Nome... it's Zack Steer and - can't remember who else. Here's Lance Mackey coming in:

Today, Lance Mackey (Kyle W's guy!) came in as the winner. Jeff King (Mae's guy) came in second. These two have been in a close race.
Every winner has their official photo taken with their lead dog. I'm not sure if this is Lance Mackey's official... because I thought he came in with 2 lead dogs. This is a 'bootie' worn by one of Robert Buntzen's dogs ... probably in 1996. A student I had that year went to Alaska after we had studied the Iditarod. He went to visit his aunt in Anchorage, who just happened to know Robert Buntzen. Michael, my student, met Robert, told him how we had studied the race, and a few weeks later, a package arrived filled with about 75 booties! You can see where his dog wore a hole in this one. While studying the Iditarod, we are also reading Woodsong, by Gary Paulsen. It is EXCELLENT...and sometimes I read little excerpts fromWinterdance. I call this book the 'adult version of Woodsong.' Gary Paulsen ran and finished the race - I think it was the 1995 Iditarod. Both of these books are of that race.

Ask your Room 8er about the race and their mushers, but you better be sitting down and be ready to listen. They will have a lot to tell you!

Room 8ers are happy to come "home"

"Home" in this title is Room 8.

Wednesdays are music day...or recorder days. As they were coming back from music on Wednesday, I just happened to have my camera out. Look at these little darlins... don't they look happy?Ahhh....room 8ers are the best!