Horse Riding Experience

We, well I watched at least, enjoyed our first horse riding experience yesterday. Actually first for B, second for K. The kids have all had their fair share of 'party ponies' but real fair dinkum horse riding has eluded us until now.

A couple of months ago one of our very dear homeschooling friends stumbled across Janelle and her horse riding school.  We were lucky enough to spend an afternoon with Janelle and her horses to celebrate R's 7th Birthday.

Since that experience the girls haven't stopped talking about and asking when they could go horse riding again. Yesterday was that day! This time Sig organised it for any and all homeschoolers that wanted to join us. Breaking everyone into smaller manageable groups. Although after yesterday we realised that the groups probably need to be slightly smaller again.

Janelle, is amazing with the children. I guess someone that loves horses as much as she does would find it relatively easy to tranfer her skills used with the horses across to the children.

On arrival they spent a quite a bit of time getting to know their horses, grooming, what's involved in actually taking care of a horse. How to saddle and get their horse all prepared to ride. K mounted hers like a pro. B was excited, but with some trepidation, after all they are full size horses and neither of the children have really been up that close and personal with horses before. They were both all full of smiles though!

They moved onto the arena area where they practised their horse handling skills. Control, stopping, starting, steering and communicating with their horse.

The trot always evoked giggles from all children, their little heads bobbing up and down, thankfully all of the horses knew exactly what was expected of them.

The first words out of B's mouth when we he returned me, "When can we do that again?" I guess that answers any questions I had!