Filed under Lesson plans

Gingerbread Man Lesson Plan

I’m excited to share with you today a fun lesson plan sent to me by Christine from Pony Preschool (check out their website and Facebook page)! She used it to teach preschool aged children on ponies, but it’s totally adaptable to therapeutic riding students and whatever skills they are working on. Make sure to check … Continue reading

EAL Activities from HorsePowerTR

For those of you looking for more EAL style activities, here are some ideas from a program at HorsePowerTR. They provide a blend of unmounted and mounted TR and EAL activities for a group of Naomi House residents who have complex histories including trauma, victimization from sex trafficking, childhood abuse and drug addiction. Thank you … Continue reading

Feed the Horses Activity and Lesson Plan

Here is a nice lesson that I watched a long time ago, back when I was in instructor training. I found it in my notes of things to blog and want to share it because it’s an example of a lesson that doesn’t follow the typical format but is still nice and effective, plus I … Continue reading

Goals & Objectives

A while back a reader asked me to post about goals and objectives, and I never did, so I’m sorry dear reader! It’s a bit belated but here you go. This is the handout I made for our Instructors In Training based on several handouts I already had. Hope this helps! Goals & Objectives Therapeutic … Continue reading

Lengthening and Shortening Lesson Plan and Evaluation

Yesterday I attended a seminar at the 2015 PATH Intl Conference by Marny Mansfield and Emily Wygod of Endeavor Horsemanship called “Step Up the Approach” about stepping up your approach to instructing. They had this great handout of an example lesson plan, with a video of the instructor teaching the lesson, and then we discussed it. With … Continue reading

The Cool Down & Review

Sometimes we get so into the lesson or activity we forget about appropriately ending the class and before you know it, you only have time left to do a quick lap to cool down and dismount. If your “punch line” needs a little revitalizing (like mine do lately) I hope this will help! The Review & Cool … Continue reading

Lesson Plan & Evaluation Templates

I am really excited to share with you the lesson plan writing and evaluation templates I’ve been using with our Instructors in Training (ITs) the past month. They needed something a little more detailed than The Basic Lesson Plan to write on, so I created this sheet based on one our barn already uses, and created an evaluation … Continue reading

Teaching The Skill

Just made some new handouts for our instructors in training about skills and wanted to pass along the info! Enjoy! The Skill What is the skill? Riding skill = the purposeful intention of using aids (hand, seat, voice, leg, weight) to communicate with the horse directly. We say “intention” because not all riders may actually … Continue reading

Lesson Planning: The Practice & Activity

Sometimes we get so excited about what activity we’re going to do with our students we jump in to the game or pattern without giving much time to actually practicing the skill first. In this post I want to review the different between practicing the skill and using the skill in an activity, because some riders really need … Continue reading

The Lesson Plan – Detailed

This is an extended version of The Lesson Plan – Basic. Long time followers may recognize this, as they all used to be lumped together, but I’ve split them up! Now the Basic version is just the template, and the Detailed version has the explanation. Enjoy! In the beginning I was really confused about lesson planning. … Continue reading