Adopt-A-Horse Week (Monday, June 27th and Tuesday, June 28th)

It's Adopt-A-Horse Week at Hoofbeat! This week, each group will "adopt" one of the horses and spend their Horse Science and Horse Fun lessons learning about that horse. We will also have fun creating arts and crafts, exploring during nature, and playing games during sports!

Here are our groups this week:

The Falabellas and group leader Megan:

The Falabellas adopted Slammer, who is a miniature horse--also known as a Falabella!

The Shetlands and group leader Kate:

The Shetlands adopted Lighting, one of Hoofbeat's Shetland ponies.

The Pintos and group leader Jessica adopt Quincy. He is a pinto although he looks more like a roan upon first inspection!

The Arabians and group leader Samantha:

The Arabians adopted Ladd, who is an Arabian himself. Look at his delicate face!

The Morgans and group leader Leah:

The Morgans adopted BJ, a very popular horse at Day Camp. The Quarter Horses and group leader Mackenzie adopted Shadow, who is also a Quarter Horse.

On Tuesday, the groups all got to practice grooming with their adopted horse (or pony). The Shetlands did a great job with Lightning!

In arts and crafts on Tuesday, campers got to create "Fuse Bead" magnets.

Everyone has been doing a great job in their riding lessons. Here the Shetlands line up to trot.

Riding instructor Holly leads a Horse Science lesson about colors and markings in the shade.

We have been having a great time at camp so far this week!

Thursday, June 23rd and Friday, June 24th

We got hit with some rainy weather again on Thursday, so it was a perfect day to stay inside and cuddle with Pumpkin (Punky), our special guest kitty.


It dried up a bit in the afternoon and Leah led some games of "500."

A miniature horse named Slammer was our special guest on Friday. We were able to play with him and some dairy goats.
On Friday we also went on trail rides and did some bareback riding. Linus (shown below) makes a good bareback mount since his back is less bony!

Here, a couple Arabians head off into the woods for their trail ride.

Thanks for coming to Small Animal Week everyone!

Wednesday, June 22nd

Although it was grey outside today, we were happy to welcome Yahtzee and Jasmine (baby goats) to Hoofbeat to be our special small animal guests. We learned all about fainting goats (which is their breed) and took them outside for some exercise. They were very friendly and sometimes noisy!

Some groups played "Red light, Green light" during riding lessons to practice skills such as stopping, walking and steering. If a rider was given too many tickets, they had to sing a song for the class!

In arts and crafts, we made animal clothespin magnets.

Those will be cute and handy to have on the fridge!

During sports we played "Horse-tail tag" in which the objective was to steal the other teams "tail."

We are glad we did not get more than a few sprinkles so far today!

Tuesday, June 21st

We were excited to have nicer weather for our second day of Small Animal Week. Our special guest on Tuesday was Huey the Hedgehog. We learned all about hedgehogs and Huey walked around to visit everyone as long as we were very quiet!

Our riding skills are already improving and we got to try doing a half-circle and reverse (shown below).

We also are getting very good at cutting across to keep our spacing (demonstrated by Ladd and his rider below)!

In arts and crafts we made paper plate animals. The Shetlands were happy to show off their animal creations for a picture.

In sports we burned off extra energy by playing capture the flag.

We are looking forward to learning more about small animals and horses over the next few days!

Small Animal Week! (Monday, June 20th)

It's Small Animal Week once again! Our first special animal guest was a Teddy Bear dog named Elliot. He was very happy to meet so many new friends and showed off all his tricks!

It looked like we were going to get some rain this morning so we did some activities inside.

We colored pictures and made gimp and friendship bracelets.

One camper even made a gimp headband!

We also played a fun version of pictionary. Here, group leader Samantha poses with the Arabians while playing pictionary.

In the afternoon, we did our regular rotations. During the small animal care class, the campers learned all about dogs (with help from Elliot) and then did an activity matching dog breeds and pictures.

Since it wasn't too wet or rainy we rode outside in the afternoon.

The Shetlands felt like goofing off after their riding lesson.

In arts and crafts, campers got to make animals out of egg cartons. They were very cute!

We are looking forward to meeting our next small animal guest tomorrow!

Friday, June 17th

Well, Horse Lover's week at day camp was definitely a success! Although we had some rainy weather on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were beautiful and we finished off the first week on a great note!

Due to the rain on Wednesday, we spent the morning inside staying dry. We still had a lot of fun though, doing activities such as gimp (lanyards), coloring, bag toss, Pictionary and group games.

Here Mackenzie and Katherine help the Quarter Horses and Morgans make friendship bracelets in the Day Camp Barn.

In the Lodge, a camper shows off her gimp.

It was still raining in the afternoon, so we decided to do our riding out of the rain in the indoor arena.

Here, riding instructor Holly gets ready to trot with the Arabians.
Riding instructor Amanda teaches a horse science lesson to the Morgans about horse first aid.

Sports instructor Laura stays in the lodge and takes a turn as the "detective" in a game of "Frogger" with the Falabellas.All in all, we made the best of a dreary day!

On Thursday, the weather was much nicer and Megan, the nature activity leader, decided to celebrate by building a campfire to roast marshmallows on!

Thursday was also tie-dye day, and the campers had a great time making their colorful creations.

It was still too wet on Thursday to go for a trail ride, but riding in the ring was still fun!

Here, a camper trots down the rail on Teko.

Friday was an exciting finish to the week! The trails were dry enough to take trail rides, and the campers also got to try riding bareback (without saddles). The campers also got to visit the "Trading Post" to buy some great souvenirs of their week at camp!

Thanks to all the campers who came to Hoofbeat this week to kick of the 2011 season!

Tuesday June 14th

Hello! Today was another beautiful day at Day Camp! Some staff were wishing every day could be this nice, but where's the exitement in that?

Here are some photos of our activities today:

The Arabians and riding instructor Nina enjoy a riding lesson right after lunch and choice time.

Sports leader Laura led several games of kickball throughout the day. Here, group leader Samantha pitches the ball to a Pinto.

The Shetlands had fun making "Treasure Rocks" during Nature today. Each camper got to help make rock dough and then hid a small treasure inside each "rock." In a couple of days the dough will harden and look like a real rock.

Here, a Falabella works on making a dream catcher with foam and yarn during Arts and Crafts.