Time flies in the horse world, and midwinter is typically when we begin plotting out the upcoming camp season.
For years, summer day camps and clinics have paid for our winter hay – and we’ve learned that their value goes beyond the money they bring in.
We’ve also learned that the Learning Levels curriculum plays quite nicely with both camps and clinics, allowing us to create popular, moneymaking, memorable events.
Our Wildly Popular Level Up Day Camps
When we first conceived of Level Up Camp, we’d been using the Learning Levels curriculum for several years and already had a summer packed full of specialty camps.
We didn’t want to add a lot of extra work to our schedules – to say nothing of our horses! – but thought it might be nice to have a focused mini-camp where our current students could tackle specific objectives.
The expectation was that we would have just a few motivated students participate in a half-day camp session, allowing horses and humans to rest during the day and arrive fresh for the regular evening lesson schedule.
What we did not anticipate was that Level Up Camp would become one of our most popular summer offerings, and that volume and demand would lead us to three separate full-day camp sessions!
How our Level Up Camps work:
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Camp runs four or five days, depending on what fits best into your schedule. For many families, a Monday/Friday camp is easiest to arrange. Our busy summers included a mandatory Monday off-day for both ponies and people, and Tuesdays were intensely busy with other weekly events - so we eventually adopted a Wed/Sat camp schedule.
This had the additional perk of allowing students to show off for parents and friends during our Open House on Saturday; families could audit mounted or unmounted activities at any time during the day. Don’t forget that parents are an important part of the camp experience! - For students on a budget, we offer a Mornings-Only half-day option. Students can also choose to pay by the day and attend just one or two days of camp. Be prepared, however, for half-day students to decide that they don’t want to miss out on the group fun in the afternoons!
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The range of Levels covered can be customized to suit your students. Initially, our camps included all Levels, with campers split into upper- and lower-level groups and divided between two instructors.
Then these groups got so big we ended up with separate camps for Red/Yellow, Green/Blue, and Orange through Teal Levels.
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Each day of camp has a theme. For a four-day camp, this might be Flatwork, Grids, Coursework and Cross-Country, with ground pole jumps and leadline hacks for lower level riders.
A camp devoted entirely to beginners might shift focus slightly, with mounted lessons on Safety Skills, Patterns, Polework, and Obstacle Courses.
Whenever possible, we like unmounted lessons to tie into this theme. Cross-country rides can be paired with lessons on designing conditioning programs, while a day devoted to jump courses can include unmounted sessions on course design and distances. -
Students arrive by 9am with a refillable water bottle and bagged lunch. The first group immediately tacks up while the second works on a guided unmounted project for 30 minutes to an hour.
Then the second group tacks up in enough time to arrive at the arena and begin warming up before their mounted session. -
All groups finish riding by lunch. We allow a generous period of time during lunch for “check-off”, allowing students to discuss or demonstrate objectives to earn check marks.
Campers spend the remainder of the day on unmounted group lessons, games and projects designed around an unmounted topic.
The final day of camp culminates in a competitive quiz bowl that allows students to put their new knowledge to the test. Our data sets of Level Up questions and answers (or terms and definitions) were originally developed for camp quiz-bowl competitions. These can be run using a traditional format, or as a more relaxed Level Up BINGO game or Carrot Toss Quiz.
We discovered that these camps gave our students a boost of measurable progress — and formed some close-knit friendships. Level Up camp became something our students did not want to miss!
There were so many benefits that we started looking for opportunities to recreate the camps on a smaller scale.
Enter Level Up Clinics: recurring one-day events that pair perfectly with potluck barn parties and other invaluable social events
How our Level Up Clinics work:
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The clinic runs for four hours. Typically, this includes a minimum of one hour of mounted instruction.
Twice a year, we might offer an unmounted clinic focusing entirely on powering through the HorseSense Levels - these can be a good moneymaker in the coldest part of winter and the hottest part of summer. -
Clinic attendees are broken into small groups by Level. Surprisingly, we’ve found it can be easier to group students by the HorseSense Level they’re working on, rather than Horsemanship - particularly when the mounted activity is something like gridwork that can be built up in stages.
School horse assignments also have a large part to play in forming groups. If a horse is being shared between two riders, we’ll try to schedule the lower level rider first, so the horse can warm up gradually during the first rider’s lesson, and go back to the barn after the second rider’s more demanding work.
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Opening clinics to all Levels and dividing groups in this way does require a minimum of two instructors.
We usually use a tag team approach with one of us staying in the arena and teaching both mounted sessions, and the other covering all the unmounted work in the barn.
To teach this clinic solo, we recommend limiting it to students within a specific range of Levels - for example, Red - Green Levels, or Teal Level only. -
Clinics work best with a narrow focus - so choose a topic and stick with it. Mounted lessons should have a consistent theme, such as transitions, gymnastic jumping, or improving rider position. We have a bunch of equitation patterns, jump courses, and obstacle courses that are ideal for using themes with riders at different Levels.
Unmounted topics can be announced ahead of time or chosen based on objectives attendees have in common. For example, if a clinic has students across three Levels learning about conditioning, we’ll deep dive into that subject, starting with Green Level and expanding to Teal. -
The clinic opens with a briefing where students can review their Levels booklets and discuss current goals and projects.
The final thirty minutes is designated for “check-off time”, giving students a chance to earn checkmarks by demonstrating their knowledge — which might be relevant to the clinic topic or focused on a separate objective they’ve prepared for on their own.
This review time is particularly important for the HorseSenseLevels. Many of our students can only afford one group lesson a week, and may not get as much time as they need or want to achieve unmounted objectives. Here, we tell them, is your chance!
Make no mistake, you will work for your money during these clinics
Four hours is not a lot of time when you want to thoroughly cover an objective and give each student individual attention. We do a lot of hustling and kid-wrangling to keep everything punctual.
But if you charge, say, $75 per student — which would be a serious bargain, by the way, considering the amount of instruction time — and eight students attend, you’re making $150 an hour.
Plus, your students have gotten a chance to bond and made measurable progress toward their next Levels ribbon, increasing their motivation. A profitable use of half a Saturday!
Want to use our formula?
We’ll include links below with sample schedules for both our Level Up camps and clinics.
You can also download lesson plans, patterns and maps, Level Up questions and answers for quiz bowl games, and numerous other games and worksheets we developed for our camps and clinics. Look through our Resource Center for all of these helpful teaching tools.
Whether you’re planning activities for this year or a future year, let us know what resources and materials you’d find the most helpful!
