Fun excercises to help a child practice trot without getting bored?

punxmafia

punxmafia

SuperTed
May 10, 2006
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Wales, on the coast so I can ride on the beach :)
Ive started giving lessons to a local girl last week and I know how capable she is now.

Last week we practiced our steering, stopping etc. She has them great and we tried trot, she has got rising trot holding on to the pommel and to some extent not holding on as well.

I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas for some fun things I could do with her to practice trot?

She is only young about 7 or 8 I think I can't remember, but she is only little and her feet don't go past the saddle flaps :p And the horse she only feels safe on is 14.1 so she is too little to control on her own. So The games would have to be on the lunge or leading. And I have everything from poles to cones.

Thanks
 
With my daughter we set up cones in random places in the school then gave them names of fast food outlets ie mcdonalds, KFC, burger king etc.
The aim was to ride to and stop at which ever cone was called out. Much more fun than riding to AFBMKHEK
 
I have been getting my 6 year old to raise her arms out, touch her head, hold them out to the sides, to the front and touch her knees.
 
When I teach the little kids, on the lunge I do hands on your head, hands on your shoulders, arms out like an aeroplane, hands on your knees and clap!!
 
hacking out!

we found that when our littly was relaxed she was better

plus a lot of "games" - as others have said - touching parts of the body, singing - they have to breathe if they are singing, riding to parts of the school as per someone else suggested. Some of it will just be practise - so we used to do a lot of simple games like stepping stones - trotting up to the stones, dismounting (ha ha - more like Mummy lifting her off), running over the "stones" and remounting (ie Mummy putting her back on - hmmmmm) and then trying to beat her previous time. Bending - again, trying to beat her previous time - all these were on lead rein so it wasn't her going faster and faster - the leader was making sure they went a bit quicker each time so they built up from a slow trot to an active trot.

But hacking out was best with small amounts of trotting - she'd sing out songs she knew and the Grand old Duke of York is a very good one as you can sing it to the beat of the trot so it helps them learn rhythmn and that's a lot of what they have to grasp in my opinion. She'd look for things - like can you see a white house so she'd have things to do as well as the riding

tbh, there is not that much else you can do - we found it was easier doing small amounts of trotting whilst out and about - she just sort of got on with it - and now she is that bit older, when she hit 7 we started serious lessons and she does loads of work without stirrups and reins and has started to develop a good deep seat - it will take time but at a guess I'd say she is approx 50% of the way to a good seat.
 
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