5 Ways to Turn Horse Learning Into Active Learning - No Horse Required

Connecting learning with movement can help support retention and recall. Research shows that physical movement can improve concentration and increase retention. The University of Michigan's Learning & Teaching Technology Consultants note that even simple opportunities to move can positively affect student learning. Young and old horse lovers don't need access to a barn to take advantage of this! Give your horse-crazy students ways to get moving, have fun, and practice what they're learning.

1. Measure a Horse - Without One

Use a measuring tape to measure the sofa, the table, the dog, or their sibling. Talk about how many inches tall it is. Convert that measurement into hands. Would it be a horse or a pony?

2. Become the Horse

Barn kids do this all the time! Walk, trot, canter. Have students use their arms as front legs. Show videos and pictures of horses moving and see if THEY can figure out how each gait is different. Compare the movement to other animals.

Then have a horse show! Let them practice walking, trotting, and cantering like a horse. Have them stop and back up. How do a horse's legs move when it backs up? Have them watch, figure it out, and practice.

3. Build the Barn

Give students blocks, LEGO, cardboard, craft sticks, or even paper and let them design a stable. They have to decide where horses eat and sleep, where water and equipment belong, and how horses will enter and exit.

Older kids can add measurements, scale, a budget, or acreage constraints. Now they're solving problems rather than simply memorizing barn vocabulary.

4. Make a Horse-Learning Twister Game

You don't need an actual Twister mat. A cheap plastic shower curtain makes a great reusable learning mat.

• Draw large circles across the shower curtain. If your students are old enough to write the words themselves, have them fill in the circles rather than doing it for them. Writing bay, chestnut, fetlock, withers, or hoof pick gives them another opportunity to work with the vocabulary before the game even begins.

• For younger children, an adult can write the answers, or students can help by choosing where each answer belongs.

• Tape the shower curtain down securely. The adult asks a question or shows a picture and gives a direction.

• For example, show a picture and say, “Place your left foot on this horse color.” Or ask a question and say, “Put your right hand on the correct piece of equipment.”

  
  

The child has to identify the correct answer and physically reach the matching circle.

Traditional Twister involves several people getting tangled together, but there's no need to play it that way if you're uncomfortable with that. Children can take turns and complete the challenge one at a time. Clear the mat after each question for younger children, or leave hands and feet in place for several questions to make it more challenging - and usually much funnier.

5. Gallop to the Answer

You can use the same shower curtain for an entirely different kind of review. Hang it securely against a solid surface outside. Ask the student a question and have them run up, touch the correct answer, and run back.

Turn it into a team relay if you have several students. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, bring out the water guns! Students have to hit the correct answer with their stream of water.

Be ready to get wet for this one!