Teaching girls to ride

Having never taught girls how to horseback ride before, this summer was definitely a learning experience for me. Every week we had different groups of girls come in starting on Monday and they would leave on Saturday. They would come up to the stables for the first time on Tuesday. Most of the groups were 1st -3rd graders and 4th- 5th graders. We would split their group into three separate smaller groups. These groups were given a section they were going to start with that day: Mucking, Ground School, and Riding Time. For those who do not know: mucking is were you clean up after the horses. The girls would clean the stalls, this taught the them responsibility and that horses aren't just all fun and games. Ground School is where they would learn the parts of the horse, parts of the saddle, what types of things you can do in the horse industry other than riding, colors and breeds. During riding time, we firstly taught the girls how to mount the horse properly. Next it was proper steering and walking your horse. We had the girls turn around barrels to teach them about looking where you are trying to go. After we made sure the girls were competent enough in steering and walking the horse around, we had the girls, one at a time, trot down the line. Some of our horses were so lazy and the girls wouldn't kick the horse hard enough, that we would stand along the side where they were trotting and encouraging the horses and the girls. On the third and fourth day, we would allow girls to canter if they were in the older and more advanced groups. We would "not' encourage younger girls but if they happened to canter we would check that off of their achievement list. We would also play games such as: barrel "racing", pole bending, keyhole, team switch, and "jump" and weave. On our last day with the girls we would take them on a trail ride just up to the local national park. With the two week programs we would do a little more with them. We had them do what we call a showdeo, took them on longer trail rides, the high schoolers in the advanced program got to do an overnight pack out trip, and more. This summer teaching really helped me in my riding and developing the skills to teach girls who had never ridden in their lives all the way up to girls who showed horses for several years. I'm hoping I get a chance to teach girls again (not necessarily at camps).