Last Friday, we borrowed a trailer and headed of to the elementary school I teach at to do horse demos for Harvest Day 2009. Basically, instead of doing a Halloween parade, my school celebrates the Maryland harvest - we bring in local experts and teach the students about Maryland agriculture, etc... It's such a productive use of time on a day that usually is filled with chaos since all the kids can think about is Halloween, costumes, and (of course) candy!
Over the years we had farmers, watermen, pie makers, demos on vegetable canning, representatives from Native American museums, and this year, they asked me to bring my horses! Apparently, it's been a couple years since they've last had horses at farm day.
George did barefoot trimming demos for the students and I did horsemanship demos with whatever horse wasn't working with. Unfortunately, George didn't take any pictures of me... but I managed to grab some shots of him. Remind me to have a stern talking to my husband about that!
Here, Shae demonstrates how far she can stretch her neck to eat while George trims and talks to the students.
We had 8 rotations of students come through, each between 1 to 2 classes. All the classes were wonderful about behaving themselves, and the horses seemed to enjoy the extra attention.
Here, Ren waits patiently for her turn. The kids loved the horses, and my girls could have cared less that we left the farm to go to a busy school! George fielded all sorts of questions from the students such as, "How do horses defend themselves?" "Why don't wild horses need trims?" and, "Does it hurt the horse to trim their feet?"
Maybe SOMEONE took some pictures of the demos I did... grumble. Shae enjoyed showing off her bow for the students and shamlessly begged for treats every chance she got by offering to stand on the pedestal. I did a combination of ground work and riding for the students. We discussed the role that drafts had in Maryland agriculture and early economy, as well as their role today. Next year I would like to differentiate what I present to each grade group and maybe do some simulations in reading body language. We'll see! Right now I'm just thankful we found a trailer toborrow to haul our girls to the school and a friend willing to come all the way up from St. Mary's County to trailer them! Thanks so much Steve!
I'll post any pictures if I track any down!
