Little things can make a big difference – and if you want to create a thriving lesson program, tiny riders might be the way to go.
Offering lessons to “Rising Riders,” young children aged 5 to 8, has certainly been a game changer for us! Read our Why Rainbow Level? post to see how our Rising Riders program was developed.
With time, patience and help from some wonderful ponies, we’ve been able to create invested long-term students, and watch them blossom into accomplished young riders.
But many lesson barns have a minimum age of 8 or 9 to start regular lessons — for good reasons.
Teaching younger riders in Rainbow Level is not like teaching older students. It requires a different tone, mindset, and lesson structure, along with some special safety considerations.
A few challenges you might face in Rainbow Level:
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Rising Riders have short attention spans. Like young horses, young children learn best in small chunks of time.
Every passing thought catches their interest, as do puddles, barn cats, and motorcycles going down the road. In the middle of a riding lesson, they’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about their cousin’s birthday party while forgetting to steer the pony around the cone. -
Rising Riders vary widely in maturity and physical ability. We’ve met some children who were able to start short lessons at the age of three. We’ve also met a few who were not ready at the age of six.
For this reason, our answer to questions about whether a child is old enough to start riding is always, “It depends!”
A few requirements: the child must be big enough for her head and neck to support a properly-fitted helmet. She must be comfortable interacting with unfamiliar adults without her parents present. And she must be able to follow directions well enough to participate in lesson activities safely.
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Rising Riders don’t always understand the risks involved in working around horses. Some start out fearful, and that’s completely reasonable: crouch down until your eye is level with a horse’s elbow and look up — it’s a wonder small children want to ride at all!
Other children suffer from a complete absence of fear. They can’t comprehend the danger of prey animal behavior, or the consequences of their own mistakes.
These children can find it difficult to follow rules or make safe choices, so you need to spell everything out clearly. Otherwise, you tell them not to walk behind the horse, and they crawl under the belly!
- A Rising Rider’s leg and weight aids aren’t very effective. Their feet hang only to the edge of the saddle flap, which means their leg aids feel nothing like the calf pressure most horses are used to. This can make it challenging to teach soft, correct use of natural aids. If you’re not careful, little riders can end up with kicking and yanking habits despite your best intentions.
- Rising Riders are physically at the mercy of the horse. They can get pulled out of the saddle by a grass-diving pony, or dragged while trying to lead a horse to the arena. With their high center of gravity, they can get bounced right off during a buck. And if a lazy horse dozes off on a warm day, no amount of flapping from those little legs is likely to motivate him to move.
Despite all of this, most younger children can ride and learn about horses, stay safe, and have a great time!
Our top five practical tips for teaching Rising Riders:
TIP #1: Put safety first — and practice constant vigilance
We recommend dedicating at least one full lesson to horse safety before allowing Rising Riders to lead, groom, or ride. Then review, review, review.
Don’t be shy about sending a student outside the horse’s “bubble” if they behave unsafely.
Make sure each child is practicing under direct supervision and there is always immediate help available.
At HorseSense, we require Rainbow Level students to wear their helmets at all times when working in the barn. Their heads are much closer to the horse’s hooves, and their small bodies can be knocked down by something as minor as a horse stomping at a fly. Encourage parents to invest in well-fitting schooling helmets – preferably something adjustable to accommodate growing heads and hairstyles – and paddock boots.
Correctly-fitting tack plays a large role in riding safety – but Rising Riders are hard to fit. Stay tuned for an upcoming LLPro post full of cost-effective tricks for making tack safe for all ages.
TIP #2: Choose your four-legged assistants wisely
You need excellent school horses for small children. Think quiet, forgiving, and easy to handle. If a child gets in trouble, the horse should stop and wait for you to sort things out.
Our string of Rising Rider horses is made of medium and large ponies in their twenties, with years of lesson experience under their girths.
Not much scares them anymore. They’re perfectly content to follow a leader at the walk and jog, and to catch some zzz’s during group lesson discussions — especially if they know there will be sanctioned treat-giving at the end of the lesson.
Small ponies might be more proportionate, but we find that a pony too small to be schooled by older, experienced riders is hard to keep honest!
TIP #3: Choose your two-legged assistants wisely
It is easiest — and often safest — to teach Rising Riders in short private lessons. But group sessions are more cost-effective, and if you have children of similar ages and ability levels, those lessons are a LOT more fun.
For this to happen, you’ll need to carefully select and train human helpers. A 1:1 student-to-Ground Buddy ratio is ideal, if you have complete faith in the attentiveness of your assistants!
Good Ground Buddies are personable, enthusiastic, and safety-conscious. They might be assistant instructors hired specifically for Rising Rider lessons or older, experienced students eager to volunteer.
You’ll also need to have a clear understanding of the legalities of using Ground Buddies, especially if they are minors. Talk to your insurance company to find out how using Ground Buddies impacts your risk managment, and make sure you have coverage. Check compliance with your local, state, or federal laws for any minors you employ, even as volunteers.
In our experience, once we find a few great Ground Buddies, the benefits of using them far outweigh the hassles.
They protect our horses from rough riding by backing up the student’s aids. They allow us to offer camps and show classes for Rising Riders that we could not provide otherwise, and they make regular lessons much safer. (We’ve never had a fall during a group Rising Rider activity!)
For more on how we use Ground Buddies, see the introduction in our Red Level Lesson Plans.
TIP #4: Make EVERYTHING a game
Keeping Rising Riders engaged requires short, focused lessons of half an hour or less, plenty of variety, and tons of FUN.
Without talking down to your students, you should conduct these lessons with simple language and generous praise.
Mounted games using arena props are always popular and a good way to encourage balanced riding. But you can – and should – turn every skill you teach into a game. Rising Riders love stories and playful challenges, and are ten times more likely to remember a lesson built around them.
Use imagery and rhymes and embrace silly analogies. Never walk between two poles when you can walk across a bridge over alligator-infested waters!
Rainbow Level lesson plans are full of the imagery we use for Rising Riders
TIP #5: Think outside the box
Rising Rider lessons can be taught with formal instruction; you do still teach equitation and basic ring figures.
But they can also take the shape of bareback sing-a-longs, or pony painting days, or leadline hacks through the pasture where you talk about butterfly species and ice cream flavors.
Throw out all your preconceived notions about how beginner lessons should progress for these tiny riders. Rising Riders might be passengers on a horse for years, or however long it takes their bodies to catch up with their enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, they may not be able to steer their horse away from the herd, or care about posting diagonals. But it doesn’t mean they’re not learning.
Keep your expectations low, your enthusiasm high, and trust the process
Every step you take together will instill good habits and build confidence.
And don’t forget to have a little fun yourself. When it comes to experiencing the pure, magical joy of horse time, young students have a few things to teach us!