My 2017 Speech. We should have horse riding at Owairaka School.

My 2017 Speech about Horse's. We should have horse riding at Owairaka School.

Who loves movie stars?

I mean, who doesn't?

Do you ever wonder if movie stars get any practice when they heroically jump onto their horses and gallop into the sunset?  Well, if I did that without any practice, I would topple over onto the ground and look like a total idiot.

Hi -  my name is Olivia and I love horses. I think that horse riding should be part of what we do at Owairaka school and in some ways it is just as important as Garden to Table or learning to swim.

So if we can have bees, surely we can have horses?

Firstly. horse riding can benefit anyone who does it in many, many ways.

Benefits include building confidence, balance and coordination by being on something a little less stable than the ground. If you are shy and nervous horses can help fix that because you need to be assertive by pulling the reins and controlling them.

Also, once you get hold of the horse you can feel so relaxed and it helps relieve lots of stress (LIKE FROM WRITING THIS SPEECH!) Ahh I need a horse.

Horse riding improves fitness. Our muscles in our legs and tummies get stronger by riding and caring for horses. Even mucking out the stables brings fitness too.

So,how would it look for our school

If there isn’t enough room for the horses and they can’t stay permanently at our school, we could find a place for them to live nearby. Each riding day they could be transported in horse floats over to our school.

Classes could have separate times to ride. The class would be split into a few groups. Considering the size of our field, riding would be on about six horses.

The first small group would be doing the horse riding. The second group would be learning how to take care of the horses from the instructor or horse teacher.

I Know you are wondering how we would pay for this all. Well I have a solution for that too. The government can pay! Im sure the government will  see that it is ideal to have horse riding lessons at Owairaka. They will see that horse riding in schools is unique and will help pay for the horses and horse riding instructors and hopefully find a place for the horses to stay overnight as well. Our school would be really popular for students and parents. Also if we need to fundraise more money, over the weekend we could let the public ride the horses for a fee. That way the horses can become part of our community.

Have you ever heard of an awesome program called “Riding for the disabled”?

Riding for the disabled is an organisation of volunteers who help disabled students by regularly taking them to riding stables where they ride, groom and handle the horses. On the riding for the disabled website, I have read about a girl called Liv - she has cerebral palsy. She lives in Gisborne and does riding for the disabled.

When she gets off the horse she is much more able to walk, and she is becoming a lot stronger. Cerebral palsy causes Liv’s muscles to tighten, but the Horse riding helps to relax them and as a bonus, she has also improved her confidence. Anyway, horse riding helps anyone that does it, disabled or not.

So with all these points I have talked to you about that’s why I think that Owairaka should be a unique school with horses, The benefits are amazing for students and teachers. I promise you, if you agree with me you might be seeing an Owairaka student jump on a horse and heroically gallop into the sunset as a expert.

Join me and see what we can accomplish.

Thank you.