When it comes to teaching fun, engaging unmounted lessons, lecturing is not the way to your students’ hearts.
You can get away with a little “talking” time with older children and adults, especially when you structure it as an interactive discussion. But younger children, kinesthetic learners, and students with limited attention spans need to stay busy.
And the more your students involve all their senses, see and feel and DO, the more likely they are to retain information.
Unmounted lessons should be hands-on and interesting — even for students who would rather be riding!
Of course, teaching interactive barn lessons can require you to have a fair bit of STUFF.
If you have to teach a rainy day lesson on the fly, or you’re forced to move inside an office or classroom, you may find yourself scrambling for props.
One solution is to create a resource library of written materials and physical teaching tools you can easily dip into whenever needed
We think the time spent on putting a library together is a wise investment, as it can save you hours of preparation in the long run.
Set aside a rainy afternoon or schedule an admin day. Do you have working students, or participants in an unmounted class or club? Consider enlisting their help: we’ve found that our students like to be involved in the process of designing lessons, and bring their own creative ideas to the party.
Start small
Start by assembling folders of printed materials for each topic you’d like to teach. You can create a set of folders for your own use, and a set that you keep available in the barn for students.
These space-saving folders can also be stashed neatly in a file box and travel with you wherever you go.
Each folder might include:
- Multiple copies of worksheets, including templates for stall cards, health records, fitness trackers, etc.
- Relevant study guide pages spanning several Levels
- Coloring pages
- Magazine articles and/or infographics
- Level Up flash cards
- Stuff Happens cards
- Sheets of pre-printed labels (eg., pony parts) and blank labels
- Blank paper and/or index cards
You might also wish to include some checklists or lesson plans to keep them handy for your own personal use. Include a few folders for both unmounted HorseSense lessons and impromptu rainy day “riding lessons” with unmounted lessons about horsemanship.
For example, we maintain a dressage folder that includes copies of USDF, USEA and WDAA tests; training pyramid infographics; articles torn from back issues of Practical Horseman; cardstock dressage letters that can be used to mark a hobbyhorse-scale arena; and worksheets for both ring figure and dressage arena letters.
Need inspiration for unmounted lesson activities? Search for HorseSense Teaching Guides by Level, or browse through chapters for 27 different topics in The Big Book of Barn Lessons.
Got games?
While you’re printing, assemble a few materials for unmounted fun and games.
This could include scavenger hunts, bingo cards, and terms for Pony Pictionary.
Put together a box with additional tools that can be used for a variety of games, such as clipboards and pens, playing cards, foam dice, stopwatches and/or a dinner bell. (These can come in handy during mounted lessons, too!)
Find more ideas for unmounted games in this blog post: Let the Unmounted Games Begin!
TIP: Overwhelmed by the cost of printing? Try crowdsourcing it. Your barn may have a student or family member with unlimited printing privileges; you never know until you ask.
Lessons in a box
If you have a little extra time and space, consider investing in plastic storage tubs and creating boxed lesson kits. Each box can be organized by topic or theme and include hands-on materials and props along with folders of printed materials.
If you take your lessons on the road, you can use a similar concept to pack two separate boxes, one for mounted lessons and one for unmounted lessons.
We have boxes full of tools for teaching feeding and nutrition, conformation, breeds, colors and markings, farrier tools and horseshoe types, bitting, parasite prevention, toxic plants, and jump design.
Each box is clearly labeled and stored on a bookshelf in the student lounge, ready for camp projects or lessons on the go.
With a little creativity, you can pack each tub with a LOT of Useful Stuff. Here are the contents of just a few of our boxes:
NUTRITION:
- Plastic sandwich bags filled with feed samples (different types of hays, whole grains and processed feeds)
- Prompts for feeding rules (see HorseSense Teaching Guide – Unmounted Lessons for Yellow Level for a full list)
- Feed tags torn from bags
- Several different supplement catalogs
- Weight tape and calculator for determining rations
- Body condition scoring chart
- Stuff Happens cards for Yellow and Orange Level
- Feed Store Scavenger Hunt
- Blank feed charts and worksheets
CONFORMATION:
- Laminated side-angle photos of different standing horses for conformation judging
- Flashcards
- Paper doll horse parts with different proportions to mix and match
- Weighted string to form plumb line
- Chalk or masking tape for marking shoulder, arm, hip, etc.
- Protractor for demonstrating angles
- Guess that Breed Worksheets for lessons on breed type conformation
- Conformation judging worksheets to use on a live school horse
COLORS AND MARKINGS:
- Laminated photos of unusual colors
- Model horses (Stablemates, Mini Whinnies or similar small brands) in different colors
- Labeled “stalls” for model horses — these can be as simple as squares on cardstock
- Level Up Bingo cards
- Flashcards
- White felt markings — can be attached with Velcro™ to a horse face or leg made out of brown felt
- Horse Markings worksheets
- Coloring pages and crayons/markers
Other fun additions to your unmounted lesson library might include:
Full-sized model horses with accessories can entertain younger students for hours, and provide older students with convenient models for conformation judging and grid design.
This is a good job for battered, sturdy old models with no real market value — check your local thrift shop and flea markets.
Don’t forget to give your plastic ponies some obstacles to play with! Wooden dowels and popsicle sticks can be used to craft scaled down cavaletti and jumps — a great indoor camp activity.
See how we use model horses to teach polework distances in this blog post on Horsey Math.
Horsey board games such as Horseopoly and Herd Your Horses can be a surprisingly good way to teach students about horse identification. Our Herd Your Horses game has been in use since the 1990s (!) and kids still get fiercely competitive over the beautifully illustrated cards.
Do you have an old saddle or bridle that’s no longer in use? Add a sturdy saddle rack and you have several hours of indoor lessons ready to go.
We use our retired tack to practice terminology, assembly, tack cleaning, adjusting stirrup length, balanced position in the saddle, survival skills, adjusting reins and maintaining contact.
If you have room for a large storage tub, expand your old tack collection to include bits, protective boots, martingales, different types of nosebands, etc. This makes it easy to scale indoor lessons for different levels — and reduces the impact of unmounted lessons on a tidy tack room!
Hobbyhorses require a bit of floor space to work comfortably, but can teach dozens of important and entertaining “riding” lessons.
Read more about how we use hobbyhorses HERE.
Don’t forget good old fashioned books. There are many informative and visual books available on every equine topic under the sun — and if you’re an equine professional, they definitely count as a business expense!
We gently suggest NOT loaning personal copies of books to students, even the ones you desperately want them to read, because of the odds that you will never see that book again.
Instead, keep a small student library with a checkout form that can be signed and dated.
Include a couple of good, general equine encyclopedias along with books on specialized topics, such as conditioning or feeding programs.
Building a resource library for unmounted lessons requires a bit of time, dedicated storage space, and an initial investment in printing and materials
But it establishes that you take unmounted education seriously, which helps your students to do the same.
And if you can teach organized unmounted lessons with ease, you can approach them with energy and enthusiasm — inspiring your students to come back for more!
Want even more ideas for unmounted lessons?
- See a few of our favorite unmounted activities in this blog post: Unmounted Lessons Your Students Will Love
- Take a tour of our horsey classroom filled with learning stations and hands-on teaching tools.
- Check out some of our favorite lesson props on this curated Amazon list. (As Amazon associates, we get a very tiny commission if you purchase anything on this list, at no additional cost to you.)
