October 2020 Issue

Page 8 October 2020 EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN I n 2020, Summer Horse Camp Came in a Box a nd our 13 – 14 year old age g roup was The Horses. Ages 15 to 1 8 (my group) were The Drafts.” Kocher said each group had a te am leader in charge of the educa- ti onal materials. A box of supplies s ent in advance contained work s heets and activities like word s earches, crossword puzzles, a col- o ring page for the younger kids and e ducational documents like a sheet w ith horse vital signs. Each child re ceived a real stethoscope, craft supplies for their specific activities, and baggies with samples of feed for the nutrition session. “Day one was the science of equine science,” Kocher said. “Day two was art and history of the horse. Day three was anatomy. They had activity instructions plus pipe cleaners and pasta and googly eyes for parts of the horse. Little kids glued pasta representing the skeletal components of the horse to paper. Older kids did the 3-D version with the pipe cleaners. We got horses rearing, sliding stops in reining and all sorts of positions,” she said with a laugh. “They were so cool. Each child took a photo of their activity and we uploaded them to a box folder, organizing them by age, so we could pull up the age group they were in.” Campers discussed their skel- etal horse diagrams and the 3-D versions that they could all see in the folder. Then, they covered Horse Health. Kocher said she used her own horse from home for the older group, and that was fun. “They learned about horse vital signs. People had donated real stethoscopes, so they could practice on living animals in their home. We talked about pulse and respiration. There was vet wrap in the box for them to practice wrapping legs, and a vital sheet to put in their barn, plus a sheet on bandaging instructions and how to use them correctly.” On day five, the campers learned about nutrition, discuss- ing forage versus concentrates. On the last day they covered equine careers. “At the beginning of camp, we asked them to come up with an infographic or a business card that would be their own equine career,” Kocher said. “We talked about the economic impact of the equine industry in Pennsylvania. We sent a camp t-shirt to wear on the last day. The PAHorse Racing Association had also put together a harness driving package with information about PA harness and thoroughbred racing with trading cards of jock- eys and harness racing, and they got that in their box, too.” Kocher said the feedback from parents was extremely pos- itive. Registration was originally capped at 60, but the response was so overwhelming that they opened it up to 120, and they still had 30 on a wait list. The cost was $15 for PA 4-H members and $45 to out of state and non-4-H members. Alyssa Ronco’s daughter An- geli is in the Cloverbud program. She said her daughter was excited to be a part of the camp. ( Continued from page 4) (Continued on page 25)