Camps

Welcome to the Heads Up Day Camps!

July 25 – 29, 2011

Our camps are focussed on fun, but lots of learning too. At our camps we do arts and crafts, games, horsemanship, horse care and, of course, lots of riding! Heads Up! Day camps are a week of 7 hours a day immersion in horses – heaven for the horse lover! Our horsey volunteers will help the campers with all handling and care to ensure a safe and fun experience for all.

Hours:

Camps begin at 9:00 am (drop off anytime after 8:40), and finish at 4:00 pm (pick up before 4:30). They run the whole week, Monday to Friday.

What will we do?

We split the campers into ability appropriate riding groups (ie beginners stay together, experienced riders stay together). Approximately half the day is devoted to getting ready for riding, riding, and putting the horse away after the ride. The other half of the day is spent doing some theory about horses (experience appropriate), playing games (age and developmentally appropriate), arts and crafts (horsey theme, of course), and a few special projects during the week. Some of those projects include painting a picture frame, painting a jump, and painting a horse (and bathing it after!).

The riding components will include structured lesson skills as well as fun stuff like on-horseback games. We will never pressure the kids to do more than they are comfortable with – especially the beginners – this is meant to be a taste of horses to see if they’d like to do more, and keep them off the couch!

The beginner camp groups will focus on basic skills such as steering, stopping, going and learning how to trot (some will learn to canter). These groups will do theory about the parts of the horse, parts of tack, basic horse behaviour, cleaning tack, feeding horses, and other related topics.

The more advanced groups will get more information about stable management, more advanced training equipment, jumping course design, dressage, as well as more details on stable management and dealing with horses that don’t fit into the regular patterns. The more advanced groups will also participate in preparation for horse shows.

Cost:

Day camps are $350 for the week, payable on the first day of the camp. All cheques made out to Trendsetting Services Inc.

What do we need to bring?

Campers need to be prepared for any weather such as wind, rain, sun and cold or hot (welcome to Alberta in the summer!) – so having a knapsack packed with extra layers, jackets, rain jacket, sunscreen, bug spray, water bottles, snacks, lunch, and a change of clothes (you never know with horses!) will save everyone the hassles of discomfort during the day. The facility we are at has room for kids to store their stuff in lockers during the week.

More questions?

Please feel free to contact us via this website, or phone Lara at (780) 433-1464 for more details. We will post camp dates by January 2011 so you can plan your summer!