Standing on top of Horse Video

I just realized that I have been blogging about hippotherapy for a full year!
This video of a child standing on top of a horse gives you a sense of the tremendous effort, strength, body awareness, balance and concentration that goes into standing on top of an animal even when the animal is just standing there. This activity can be gradually graded with challenges offered by having the horse walk straight lines and later on curves. I sometimes ask children to do the velcro bottle activity while standing stationary. It is very familiar and relatively easy to pull the toys off the bottle and insert them inside. They can do it pretty quickly so they know that they will be able to sit in a few minutes and children with attention disorders seem to get very nicely focused when doing a hand activity while standing on top of a horse.