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admin on Monday, April 19th, 2010 |
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I am a councellor at this riding camp and I have a horse and everything, but I just can’t come up with any good ways to teach these kids (who are young and get bored) about horses! We’ve groomed and played some games but I don’t know how to really make them remember what I’m trying to teach them. If any of you have ANY ideas at all please, please help me out!
The question might be, what are you trying to teach them? And I am wondering why the people who run the camp don’t have a specific agenda for you to follow? Are you supposed to just figure this all out, yourself? Also, are the kids doing a lot of riding, or are they supposed to be doing other things?
Here are some ideas, not knowing just what you are doing, there:
1. If they are riding, you can do the suitcase game:
Have them mount the horse. They can either ride the horse or you can lead the horse at whatever speed they are comfortable with. At the other end of the arena is a suitcase with all sorts of silly things they can put on. Someone will pick out one of the pieces. They have to get off the horse, put the thing on, get back on the horse and ride or be led back to the start. This is all timed. Best time wins. The fun is a lot in the funny things you might have for them to put on.
2. Paint the horse game: If you have some poster paints, you could have them paint on the horse (as long as you have deterined that the paints will wash off the horse.) They could all participate and do it together, or you could have two teams and each does one side of the horse, and then you could have judges judge the "artwork".
3. Design a hat for the horse: Everyone has some construction paper and whatever else you have to work with. They can each make a hat for the horse, and then the horse can model the hats and you can take pictures of each one with the horse, and their hat.
4. Ride to funny things in the arena: You can find funny things around the camp. Put different things around the fence or somewhere in the arena. Have them ride to the item you call out and see how quickly they can get there. Or you can lead them to the item. See if they can touch the item.
5. Pathway of poles or rope: Make a pathway in as many curvey ways as you think will work. See if they can get the horse to ride within the pathway. Make it easier at first and then make some of the paths a little harder. Or make an easy one, and make a hard one. They can graduate to the harder one if they do the easy one without mistakes. You could even make three paths. Then, as they get better at guiding the horse, they can graduate.
6. Name the parts of the horse: You could do this in a couple different ways.
-Have notecards or posterboard pieces with parts of the horse named on them. Have tape on the back of the pieces. Divide them into teams. Have each child take a card out of a box. As they take turns, they need to see if they can figure out where the card goes on the horse. You could do this right on the real horse, or on a large, life-sized drawing of a horse. Give 5 points for right answers. If the other team chooses to challenge and they are right, they get 3 points. Or figure rules out, for yourself.
7. Ride with an egg in the spoon: Each rider must go to a certain point, with an egg balanced on a spoon. They need to try to keep the egg on the spoon until they reach the end. You could do teams, or just let each child give it a try. If they cannot ride the horse and balance the egg at the same time, you could lead them.
8. Horse breeds: Give everyone a list of words that are partly horse breeds and partly other words or made up words. Tell them how many of the words are real horse breeds, and let them each pick out which ones they think are real breeds. The child with the most correct answers, wins.
8. Marshmellow horse: Have each child make a horse out of marshmellows and toothpicks, and then eat it, later.
9. Horse ghost stories: At a campfire or in the cabin if they are there overnight, have each person make up a horse ghost story.
10. Water balloon or egg toss: If you have more than one horse, you can have a water balloon or egg toss. The horses are lined up, across from one another and facing each other. Then they toss the balloon or the egg to the other person who is on the horse across from them. Each time they can catch the egg or balloon, they can back a step, or two. The last ones win.
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