The winds of winter are howling, roads are treacherous — and you just switched your riding lesson program over to a monthly tuition model. Are you doomed to months of cancellations and payment credits?
Not necessarily. With the right mindset and a little preparation, you CAN make virtual equine lessons an option for inclement weather days.
COVID-19 changed the landscape for online education and gave us useful tools for meeting with students remotely. It’s likely that your students are familiar with virtual classrooms and Zoom meetings. That makes your job easier: you won’t need to spend a lot of valuable time teaching your students how to use the software.
The flip side of this experience is that your students may have been burnt out on virtual learning. Pair this with the lack of hands-on interaction with the horse and you may find it challenging to teach fun, engaging lessons that your students actually want to attend.
We learned a few tricks during own experiment with teaching during a pandemic. (Turns out that a Levels-based curriculum with an emphasis on unmounted learning helps a lot!) We also discovered that when used only as a last resort, virtual lessons can be a great way to deliver value to your students and keep lessons on track regardless of the weather.
Tech specs
The first step to any online lesson is getting comfortable with your platform. If it’s been a while since you logged into Zoom, or you never really got the hang of it in the first place, take some time to watch some tutorials and experiment with features and settings.
It’s important to point out that while Zoom is probably the app your students are most comfortable with, there are other options, such as Google Meet or Google Classroom. You can do some research and choose the platform that seems like the best fit for your clients and your program.
For example, as of the writing of this post, the FREE version of Zoom only allows 40 minute sessions with a group. Unless you have a plan for conducting a very concise lesson, it could be worth looking into alternatives or investing in a paid Zoom plan during inclement weather seasons.
Teaching tools
Besides an online meeting space, you’ll want to assemble some visuals and other resources for making your lessons engaging. This could include:
- Cloud storage folders full of photos and videos. We keep clips of our students in action along with folders on a variety of different topics.
- Slides or PDF files for presentations. In general, the less you can lecture, the better, but slides and documents can still be a useful way to organize information.
- Youtube playlists. We teach a lot of video-based lessons (as you’ll see below!) through the magic of screen sharing. Save and organize your videos ahead of time so you don’t waste time scrolling through search results.
- Quizlet. While Quizlet study sets are designed for students to review in between lessons, you may wish to incorporate the flash cards or Match games into your online meetings.
TIP: Take an hour during a regularly-scheduled admin day to organize and update your virtual lesson resources. Your future self will thank you!

Know your audience
The age of your students will have a BIG influence over how you deliver your lessons.
Younger students need lots of action. Discussion should be brief and exciting — think storytelling instead of lecturing! — and peppered with lots of questions and opportunities for students to interact, such as guessing games, puzzles and pictures to identify.
Pre-teens and teens are most likely to be suffering from some virtual lesson burnout, and you’ll need to be more interesting than their phones. Controversial topics are a good way to capture their attention, as long as you demonstrate how to turn drama into a productive and balanced conversation! These students usually enjoy lessons where they can judge and rank, but may be hesitant to speak up or ask questions in front of a group.
Adult students, on the other hand, are often happy spending an entire hour on questions and answers – so plan your lesson accordingly. They generally like a good deep dive, BUT, may struggle to prioritize their lesson time, especially if they have kids or other distractions at home.
Deliver on the promise
One more important consideration before we get into lesson topics: what do your students expect to get out of their lessons?
Do you identify yourself as a riding instructor or a school of horsemanship? If your program and marketing lean heavily on the riding, your Zoom lessons will likely need to stay in this lane.
Are you using a Levels curriculum? This helps tremendously as students can view Zoom lessons as an opportunity to catch up on unmounted objectives.
How your students respond to virtual lessons will depend in large part on the culture and expectations YOU create, which starts from the moment they first walk in your door. Don’t wait until roads are impassable to try to sell your students on the importance of unmounted learning time.
Ready to plan some virtual lessons? Here are 12 lesson activities our students have enjoyed over the past 5 years:
1
Word Games such as 20 Questions are a fun way for students to demonstrate their knowledge without quizzing. Show photos of your school horse herd or a selection of horses, then say “I’m thinking of a horse… which one is it?” Students must identify the horse in as few questions as possible, using ONLY yes or no questions.
More experienced students can use the game to identify different pieces of tack, toxic plants, types of feed, etc., or you can experiment with other verbal games such as memory games and TABOO.
2
Another sneaky way to test students on their knowledge, Stuff Happens Cards allow students to discuss the worst-case scenario from the safety of their own homes. Older students enjoy using the cards as discussion prompts — especially when they learn that most of our cards are inspired by true stories — but younger students may prefer to act out the scenario.
You can increase interaction by numbering the cards and asking each student ot choose a number so they “draw” their own card.

3
Horse Talk Cards challenge students to consider how a horse would communicate confusion, fear, pain, and more. A fun lesson for children involves reading a card and having the students act out the horse’s behavior.
4
What’s Wrong with this Picture? Save and share a series of photos that you find alarming. For younger students, this could be basic horse safety infractions — leading with the rope in a coil, improperly fitted helmet, non-safe footwear, etc.
For older students, you might include pictures with tack setups, rider position and biomechanics that make you cringe. Just be sure to discuss the importance of context and how criticism should be limited to private safe spaces.
5
Judge my Eq. Throughout the year, capture photos and short videos of your students in action. (Cameras or smartphones with a “Burst” feature are great for frame-by-frame analysis.) Save these photos in a cloud storage folder so you can practice evaluating equitation and movement during virtual lessons.
Learning how to review photo and video is an incredibly valuable skill for an equestrian athlete, but start these lessons by teaching the art of helpful, positive critique — especially in a group or with self-critical teenagers!
6
Judge this Test. Play a video of a dressage test or pattern for students to practice judging movement by movement. If you are lucky enough to have video AND a completed scoresheet, your students will enjoy seeing how their scores match up to the official judge’s. (Bonus points if you are the rider in the video!)
7
Judge this Class. A variation of the exercise above, show students three different tests, jumper rounds, trail courses, etc. and have them judge and pin the class.

8
Rankings aren’t just for horse shows. Your students can also sort photos from best to worst as they evaluate equitation, dressage maneuvers, conformation, body condition, hoof condition, saddle fit, equine facilities, etc.
9
Great Debate. It’s time to stir the pot! Introduce a controversial topic with a lot of nuance: R+ versus R- training, shoeing versus barefoot, blanketing, etc. Have students argue FOR and AGAINST each practice.
Best for older audiences, this exercise encourages critical thinking — a skill many equestrians could stand to Level Up — and is particularly recommended for teens exploring the horsey side of social media.
10
Keep it kinesthetic. If your students need more movement, you can lead them through off-horse exercises for balance and symmetry, body awareness exercises, breathwork techniques, or even fitness challenges, such as a timed two-point squat!
Depending on your technical setup, you MIGHT need a microphone to ensure that students can hear you as you demonstrate exercises.
11
Goal setting sessions work best for private lessons and small groups if you really want to get insight into your student’s motivations — but you can also lead a large group through the process of breaking a long-term goal into smaller goals and creating achievable action steps.
12
If you’re comfortable winging it, let your students look through their unchecked Learning Levels objectives and request the lesson topic. They may see something they feel ready to get checked off.
A few final tips for making your virtual lessons a success:
- Put the possibility in writing. Outline in your policy packet — which should be given to students at LEAST once a year as well as when they enroll — that you may choose to offer virtual lessons in certain circumstances.
- Consider creating a brief tutorial on how to attend a virtual lesson — especially if you are using a platform such as Google Classroom. We promise this will save you tons of time in the long run!
- Offer incentives for attendance. For example, you could collect the names of every student who attends a virtual lesson during a specific time period, then draw a name for a free lesson or some farm logo apparel.
- Be EXCITED about them. Enthusiasm is contagious!
One last note from Nikki:
As a horse-crazy kid growing up in Virginia, I took weekly lessons at a barn with outdoor sand and grass arenas. It was not uncommon to go 6-8 weeks without lessons due to frozen footing during the coldest part of winter. I missed my horse time terribly and would have been THRILLED to meet with my instructor in any capacity during these cold spells. If only unmounted education had been normalized and there were online options back then!