Use this teaching guide to plan creative unmounted lessons for the Red Level HorseSense curriculum.
Bundled for your convenience, this comprehensive collection of lesson activities covers every objective in the introductory Red HorseSense Level, including horse safety, equine body language and anatomy, basic ground handling and grooming, tack and feeding rules.
You can use the links in the document’s Table of Contents to easily navigate to the following lesson topics:
- Horse Safety
- Horse Talk
- Dressed for Success
- Catch and Release
- Leader Lessons
- All Tied Up
- All Cleaned Up
- No Hoof, No Horse
- Pony Parts
- Saddle Up
- What’s For Dinner
- The Poop Scoop
NOTE: All of these revised lessons were previously available as separate download files.
Why are HorseSense Teaching Guides different from the rest of our lesson plans?
As an equine educator, you have the power to facilitate an appreciation for horsemanship both in and out of the saddle. The specifics of how you do this, however, depend on a great many variables.
Unmounted lesson structure is often determined by facility, horse availability, group size, the goals of your program, and the age and goals of your students. Your approach might need to be flexible or unique!
For this reason, instead of creating traditional lesson outlines for the HorseSense curriculum, we’ve compiled collections of our favorite lesson activities for teaching each Level. You can craft a lesson using one or more of the suggested activities, mixing and matching ideas to suit your individual needs.
The lessons shared here have all been used in our riding school and can be adapted to suit students of all ages. While a few topics are designed to be taught consecutively, in many cases you can combine activities or rearrange the order in which the material is taught.
Each 4-page section includes:
- An explanation of why we think the objective is important, and the criteria we use to determine whether or not a student has achieved it.
- Suggestions for how to teach the objective, both as standalone lessons and as part of a mounted lesson or camp program. Includes directions for multiple games and activities as well as impromptu rainy day lesson plans and discussion prompts.
- Sample maps, diagrams and lists, with URLs for helpful Learning Levels resources.
- Additional teaching tips and cautionary notes.
We encourage you to use these teaching guides as a general guideline and a source of inspiration. Feel free to modify the lesson activities and supplement them with your own ideas. If this is your first time using our unmounted teaching guides, please make sure that you read the revised How to Use HorseSense Teaching Guides section on pages 1-4!
