Grooming to Read

A program focused on guiding students who struggle with reading skills.

This curriculum offers participants the chance to:

• Build Confidence – Reading to a minihorse can help build confidence and reduce anxiety
• Develop Social-Emotional Skills – Interactions with animals can promote social awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation
• Improve Reading Skills – Targeting literacy skills, such as fluency, phonics, and comprehension.

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The program will use a curriculum that advances a student in their reading skills as they become more proficient in each level of the program. Students will have checklists for knowledge and horsemanship skills to show their accomplishments as well as their improvement in reading skills. Grooming to Read will provide a variety of learning types such as hearing, seeing, moving, feeling etc. Students who learn kinetically(feeling/touching), for example, can trace letters on the side of the mini. The hair and warmth of the horse can help the student learn and memorize the letter. Students might also be asked to lead the mini through a course of cones in the shape of letters to improve retention. These are just a few examples of how miniature horses can facilitate letter recognition, reading and spelling.

Time spent includes meaningful interaction with caring adults, wherein students, years from now will not remember what the tutor helped them resolve on a certain day, but how they made them feel. That they felt success, recognized and rewarded for small bits of progress. The student will also remember the time they spent with the miniature horse as a listening friend who helped them at a time when they were frustrated and unsure of how to find success.