Horses and Home Education
If you’re home-educating a child who loves horses then why not let our EAL horses help teach them maths, science, history, geography, literature and art while also improving their confidence, communication and self-esteem. Here are a few ideas that can be incorporated into our sessions:
Maths and finance: Keeping track of all the costs associated with horse ownership is a great introduction to budgeting and bookkeeping. Basic maths is used to ensure a horse is given the correct amount of feed depending on its breed, weight, workload and age. Dressage scoring requires that percentages be calculated. Paddock management requires the calculation of areas and volumes. Older students can explore the mathematics of probability in horse racing.
Science: Understanding the biology of the horse, how horses evolved and the impact humans have had on breeding and genetics.
History: Investigating how the use of horses revolutionised agriculture, communication, transportation and war.
Geography: Identifying the countries where different horse breeds originated and determine how the climate, landscape, wildlife and inhabitants if those countries may have influenced how each breed developed.
Literature: We provide examples of books featuring horses, introducing increasingly more complex books; quizzes and longer essays are then used to test reading comprehension.
Art: Works of art have included horses as subjects since they first appeared in prehistoric cave paintings around 30,000 years ago. Renaissance painters who portrayed the horse included Paolo Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Raphael and Titian. George Stubbs born in 1724 became so associated with his equestrian subjects that he was known as “the horse painter”. The Impressionist era coincided with the development of racing in France, Manet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec all acquired a lasting fascination with racing. In the 20th century Pablo Picasso introduced horses into his work and others including Susan Rothenberg and Deborah Butterfield have used horses as motifs in their paintings and sculpture.
In addition to the above, there is the list of skills children can learn directly from horses, namely confidence, compassion, kindness, respect, loyalty and responsibility, which our highly sensitive equine facilitators teach intuitively.
For more information on EAL and how it can help with home-educating or to arrange a visit to our centre at Sunset Farm, Mill Lane, Fosdyke, PE20 2BL, telephone Mike Burrow on 07729 909186, email info@inspired-eal.co.uk or see our website www.inspired-eal.co.uk.
