Schools E3

Earlier this year we were approached by two local comprehensive schools to teach lessons as part of E3 out of school activities. We agreed to teach a maximum of 16 (minimum of 10) children in two groups, 8 riding and 8 doing stable management and then swapping over, riding for approx 45 mins on tuesdays and wednesday. Last tuesday the first group arrived (17 of them as one extra had turned up) from Tonyrefail Comp. Having no knowledge of the kids that would turn up we had already tacked up 9 horses of varying sizes. Firstly I asked all the kids that could ride to stand in a group on the left and all those that couldn’t on the right. I had 12 that said they could ride and 5 that couldn’t. Needing to have to equal numbers in each group I then asked the kids who said they could ride if they had ridden more than once, three had only ridden once so they went to the other side. The outcome was only 2 of the 17 could rise to the trot. Sharon taught the stable management, Leigh taught the riding with Carla, Jodie, Tasha, Sophie and Jess all helping and it did take a lot of help to get them on and sorted. The following day Y Pant brought 11 children we split these into a riding and non riding group but two of the riding group had to be taught by Sophie as they were non riders Leigh taught the others and Marina did the stable management. Today we had Tonyrefail again this time 20 kids turned up. Trying to get 10 kids mounted adjusting stirrups and teach them in less than 40mins is quite a challenge. Today we had 11 again from Y Pant. We had them all ride together in two groups then Marina had them altogether for stable management. They have all been quite enthusiastic and good fun to teach. This is a ten week course and we hope the funding will continue into the new year. Some of these children would not have the chance to ride and it will be nice to be able to make some progress with them.

Posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 12:23 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.