In this course my fellow classmates and I had to complete 6 hours of volunteering at a local area, whether it was at a nursing home, food bank, or helping at a local organization. I took the opportunity to volunteer at the Frederick 4H Therapeutic Riding Program. This program offers individuals with disabilities to ride a horse in order to build their social skills, build their motor skills, and give them confidence. This organization states, “Our Mission is to encourage and provide Frederick County, Maryland citizens with medically certified mental, physical and/or emotional disabilities with equestrian activities to learn basic horsemanship skills, improve physically with better muscle tone, balance and posture; and improve their emotional
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I believe that, after completing my service learning hours, this program has helped thousands of students develop and aide these students with their motor and sensory development, language development, information processing, and cognitive development.
During this time I spent at the ranch I noticed quite a few things that relate to what I have learned in class. One area that I noticed the students were working on was their motor and sensory development. During this course I learned about the two different types of motor skills, fine and gross. “Gross motor development includes the attainment of skills such as rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking, and running. Gross motor behavior enables infants to move and thereby attain different and varied perspectives on the environment” (Young, 2016). This program aides the students in developing their gross …show more content…
“Cognitive development refers to the development of thinking across the lifespan” (Young, 2016). This program improves the student’s cognitive development because the occupational therapist tells the students to, “Turn left at letter A”, “Make a circle, counterclockwise at the yellow cone”, or “Put the horseshoe on the fence at letter O”. These are just a few commands that the students were given, but this allows students to familiarize themselves with the letters and their surroundings. This program also improves listening skills, hand eye coordination, motor planning, and following directions. According to HorseSense for Special Riders (HSSR), the cognitive benefits that therapeutic riding has is, “sequencing, hand-eye coordination, decision-making, following directions, listening skills, multi-tasking, sensory integration, left/right discrimination, motor planning, patterning, visual/spatial perception” (HSSR, 2016). There were many other related course concepts, but these were the major ones that the students were able to work
I believe that, after completing my service learning hours, this program has helped thousands of students develop and aide these students with their motor and sensory development, language development, information processing, and cognitive development.
During this time I spent at the ranch I noticed quite a few things that relate to what I have learned in class. One area that I noticed the students were working on was their motor and sensory development. During this course I learned about the two different types of motor skills, fine and gross. “Gross motor development includes the attainment of skills such as rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking, and running. Gross motor behavior enables infants to move and thereby attain different and varied perspectives on the environment” (Young, 2016). This program aides the students in developing their gross …show more content…
“Cognitive development refers to the development of thinking across the lifespan” (Young, 2016). This program improves the student’s cognitive development because the occupational therapist tells the students to, “Turn left at letter A”, “Make a circle, counterclockwise at the yellow cone”, or “Put the horseshoe on the fence at letter O”. These are just a few commands that the students were given, but this allows students to familiarize themselves with the letters and their surroundings. This program also improves listening skills, hand eye coordination, motor planning, and following directions. According to HorseSense for Special Riders (HSSR), the cognitive benefits that therapeutic riding has is, “sequencing, hand-eye coordination, decision-making, following directions, listening skills, multi-tasking, sensory integration, left/right discrimination, motor planning, patterning, visual/spatial perception” (HSSR, 2016). There were many other related course concepts, but these were the major ones that the students were able to work