One of the many things I miss about being out of the classroom is not being able to sing with the children every day. I love to sing, and I especially love to sing Iditarod songs. Right now I can’t be the one to teach my little friends these songs. So, let me live vicariously through all of you folks out there in internet land. Please sing these songs with your students. I guarantee you will find at least one or two that you will end up using every year. My friend Paula from Arkansas had her students perform Iditarod, Iditarod, A Dog Sled Race and the Iditarod Checkpoint song at her school’s holiday concert. They were the hit of the show!

To make singing in the classroom easier for you, I have recorded seven of my Iditarod tunes on a CD. All you have to do is download the songs, burn them onto a CD, and then you have me to sing along with. Many of the songs I posted on August 12 are on the CD, so go there for a copy of the words. The song I am giving you today is the Iditarod Checkpoint Song. I piggybacked this song to the tune of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer. Since there are so many checkpoints it really is helpful to have the sound track to learn this song.

This song is an easy lesson to tie-in to your geography studies. Students can follow the race on a wall map hung in the classroom. Maps of the trail can be found at the official website http://www.iditarod.com/. Let’s see how many students can name all of the checkpoints in order by race time!

Click here to listen to Cathy’s tunes and see all of Cathy’s Idita- Tune lessons.