Looking for some fun riding activities? With a few simple props, one can invent many skill-building games on horseback. Lots are child-friendly, though any age rider may find any such riding game engaging or useful – even to work on their horse. The Ring Toss requires only a traffic cone and a set of swimming pool diving rings.
How To Play
For small children this is the simplest version of the game: To begin – hold the child’s horse or pony, and position the traffic cone just next to the horse’s shoulder on the side of your choice. Have the child try to drop the diving rings onto the cone one at a time. You can make a secondary game over several sessions of seeing if the child can break their previous best number of rings. I will typically hand out high fives and/or lollipops as incentives to break records, or even just for getting a single ring on the cone for the day.
If your horse is a little antsy to stand still enough; or if the child is more confident, you can hand-walk or lunge a small circle so that the child can try dropping rings on the cone each pass by. Once a child solidly has a good percentage of success getting the ring on the cone, you can then progress to lunging at the trot on a circle past the cone.
In a more advanced form, for competent riders of any age, ride past the cone independently at the walk, trot or canter and try dropping the ring accurately.
For Best Success
As a tip for best success, the place to drop the ring is when the cone is in the space next to the horse’s shoulder to the point of being next to the rider’s leg. Yet if the rider remains focused on the cone once it is behind them, it will make them twist their body and become unbalanced. At that point it is best not to drop the ring, and ride on to try again. Keeping your eyes and focus in front of your horse is certainly a lesson worth learning!
Benefits and Uses
The uses for this game can be many. For the tiny tots, building hand-eye coordination is a great benefit. The Ring Toss and similar games can help riders connect their riding to the speed their horse is moving, and can teach riders balance while performing a task. To read more about how to teach a young child to ride, click here.
For riders who are independent and steering their own horse, it is a good opportunity to practice using the leg opposite the cone to push the horse close to the cone for a successful drop, and develop or fine-tune a neck rein. As a benefit for a green or skittish horse, this activity that can be used to get him accustomed to having tasks performed off of him while moving.
I commonly use this riding game individually; in fact, it is one of my daughter’s favorites. However, I have also found it works great in groups for lessons or camps. Creating a friendly competition of who can get the most rings on the cone is a fabulous incentive to focus on the assigned task.
Whether by adding a riding game like Ring Toss to your activities or by some other means, keep your riding fun for both rider and horse and you will see improvement like you could only have hoped for!
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