Off to the Races!

My second graders have been learning about search engines. We have been learning about choosing smarter keywords and using Google's cached (color-coded) search. Today, we had a horse race. I cut out 14 clipart horses and numbered them 1-14. Then, I lines them up on a long set of tables. I wrote 4 Kentucky Derby questions for each team:

1. When was the first Kentucky Derby?
2. What is the date of the 2010 Kentucky Derby?
3. Which horse won the 2009 Kentucky Derby?
4. What do women wear at the Kentucky Derby?

Each team took their question sheet to the computers. They used the skills we had been learning to try to find the answer to their question. For each correct answer, they were allowed to move their paper horse to the next position of the table (I had 4 marked spots). The first three teams to get their horses to the finish line received a sticker that said "I Placed at the Mill Creek Google Derby." It was a blast, and the students were really using the cached search to help them locate their answers faster.