Exploratory Lesson Plans
As instructors we strive to always have a plan! But oftentimes, that plan is a very loose idea of things to explore. Each therapeutic riding lesson typically has a warm up, lesson and cool down. Warm ups can be things like stretching, learning something new about your horse or equipment, chatting with your volunteer, singing songs and so much more! Cool downs typically consist of similar activities with the purpose of winding down and helping our horse cool down.
The lesson portion or “meat” of each lesson usually consists of working on a skill. This can be balance, halting, transitions, riding posture, balance at the trot or direct rein steering. As instructors we are always looking for ways to better engage our student’s attention and bodies as they learn! An ideal lesson would include a concept that can be utilized by children of all support levels and showcase their individual strengths.
This past week, we offered an exploratory color sorting game. This game can be modified a million ways and can be used to improve fine motor skills and speech skills in addition to being a motivator for a child to learn balance, halting their horse and more! Two versions of this game could do as follows:
With a higher support need child we may place these trays full of objects around the arena in 3 locations and not pay much attention to them during warm up. If the child shows interest we may rider over and take a look! Otherwise, we may place a demand on the child like “look at the yellow tray” or “pull reins when we get to the yellow tray” or “we’re going to stop at the tray and I want you to tell me what color”. Then the child take the reins from there on what direction our activity goes. They may find a particular interest in a certain toy. Maybe they are fixated on the horse and we choose to work on having good balance as we go fast with our toy horse to carry him around the arena. The options are endless! All the while, the instructor is prompting the child in riding skills, language development, and motor skills!
With a lower support need child we might “hide” or place all of these objects around the arena. Our warm up could consist of eye spying certain objects or colors or chatting with their sidewalker to see how many items they can count. Then our skill could be to halt at each object, trot to each object etc to collect them all and delivery them to their matching trays. This version also allows for a lot of flexibility and control for our riders. Maybe they want to collect all yellow first or everything on one side of the arena.
No matter a child’s abilities, strengths, weaknesses or interests… having a flexible, exploratory lesson activity sets everyone up for success! It allows the rider have an increased sense of control, ability to practice making decisions and the freedom to be curious without consequence.
