Hearts of the Herd

We were a little bummed this week when a grant we were hoping for to help with funding for programs next year wasn’t approved. We really tried to focus on the good and look ahead. Then this note came in the mail with a very generous donation. It definitely added lots of sunshine to our days!!
Thank you to our amazing donors. We appreciate you so much!

More sunshine from this week even on a rainy day…
We are excited that four new students started this week and we are getting ready to kick off our teen girls program. There is so much to be grateful for in this journey.

We are so excited for the start of our Be Empowered by the Herd program starting next Wednesday for teen girls. We still have 2 spots open, so if interested please register or contact us today.

Link to our program page is in the comments.

We are so excited for this partnership. Tiffany has been an amazing addition to our team.

At Shire Counseling and Coaching, you will find several equine enthusiasts! Following dreams and passions, Shire Counseling and Coaching has partnered with Hearts of the Heard, a Non-Profit in Frederick County, Maryland to offer an equine assisted psychotherapy. https://www.heartsoftheherd.org/

Tiffany Shaw, co-owner of Shire Counseling and Coaching, leads this practice modality for Shire Counseling and Coaching. Tiffany is a lifelong equestrian and since 2007 a licensed mental health clinician. In addition to her equine specific trainings and experience, Tiffany is also a registered cognitive processing therapists specializing in treating those with trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder across the life span. Driven by her passion for horses, Tiffany offers innovative equine assisted psychotherapy. With her extensive experience and training, Tiffany is poised to guide clients on transformative therapeutic journeys.

More Information on our WebPage!

This week was a perfect example of why having an indoor arena that we can access when weather is bad is so important to our mission. Unfortunately we had to cancel 3 sessions the last 2 days due to the weather. If anyone has a connection to a local barn that would allow us to lease indoor arena space when needed, please reach out to us.

We were so fortunate to have the opportunity to lease arena space with Starry Night Stables this past winter to get our programs up and running. Great for them but sad for us, they are selling the property and we will not be able to use the space this winter. We are looking for a new barn to lease indoor arena space once the weather turns cold and the daylight gets cut short. Please let us know if you have any connections to a barn in the Frederick area that may be interested in helping us out. This will help us continue our programs offerings year round. If not, we will have to pause our programs mid November to mid March.

A rainy day meant rescheduling visits with potential families around the rain path and unfortunately rescheduling an EAL session to another day. The herd is trying to stay dry and needed some extra love today. They loved the visitors they got to meet today.

New start date! Still time to register.

A huge shout out to our amazing veterinarians and staff at Walksverville vet clinic who take such great care of our herd. Thank you for always being there to answer questions and when we need you.

Please consider sharing with any families you know in Frederick area that have a teen girl that could benefit from the program. More information can be found on our program page (see comments).

We are adjusting the start date to August 21st.

Are you curious about our programs and want to learn more about Hearts of the Herd? We love visiting with families and sharing about what we do and how it can help. Contact us today to schedule a visit to meet the herd and learn more about the programs we offer.

Hi Hearts of the Herd followers!
We are in the process of creating a proposal for a substantial donation. One of the things we would love to share in part of the proposal are reviews from those who have had children involved in the program, those we have connected with at our community events or those who have supported us as volunteers. Your voice matters to us as we want to make sure that our programs are meeting the needs of those we serve. We will also share these reviews with families who are interested in signing their child up, to give them insight from those who have been part of our programs.
If you are willing and interested, please feel free to email us your review at [email protected], you can message us on here or feel free to post below. If you have things we need to work on, share that as well, that will only make us grow. Thank you in advance!!

Check out our Mid Year Review Newsletter. We are so excited for the amazing things happening with Hearts of the Herd.

We were so fortunate to have the opportunity to lease arena space with Starry Night Stables this past winter to get our programs up and running. Great for them but sad for us, they are selling the property and we will not be able to use the space this winter. We are looking for a new barn to lease indoor arena space once the weather turns cold and the daylight gets cut short. Please let us know if you have any connections to a barn in the Frederick area that may be interested in helping us out. This will help us continue our programs offerings year round. If not, we will have to pause our programs mid November to mid March.

Our volunteers are simply amazing!!
We had an awesome visit on Saturday at the Spring Arbor Assisted Living Center. Thank you to Nick for coming along to help with Roury. Today we had the chance to visit with some amazing kids and staff at the YMCA Kids Unlimited program in Myersville. Thank you to Maritza, Alexis, Bill, Tiffany, Jan, Caitlin and Caitlin for helping us out. We truly appreciate the time, energy and support of all of our amazing volunteers. More pictures to come of these fun events.

We are so incredibly grateful for all of our AMAZING volunteers that helped us with this week’s Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Sessions. You all are wonderful and we greatly appreciate your time, energy and patience. Thank you Tiffany, Cheyenne, Jan, Sherri, McKenna, Aine, Sophia, Alexis and Caitlin. ❤️

Week 2 Day 5 Recap Learn & Grow with the Herd. Ms. Tiffany led us in our daily grounding activity before Roury joined us for some brushing and connection time and our daily breathing exercises.

Horse Powered Reading® time was next. Group 1 played Sight Word Frenzie with Roury. They had to take their "other equine partner” to the sight word pile and bring one to Roury to read it. Once they were done, they sorted it by beginning letters with our alphabet cones. Group 2 finished up reading to the herd and made their way into the arena for more parts of speech play. After they led Roury to each word and sorted by verb, adverb, noun and adjective, they then created another hysterical MadLib. This one was called If You Give Roury a Pizza. They did a great job of reading to the other group.

Ms, Cheyenne read The Zax a story about 2 Zaxs who would not compromise. We discussed what conflict means and we learned the "I feel.... when you... I need you to...." statements. We each got a scenario card and worked with a helper to complete our I feel statements for that scenario. They practiced what they would say and then acted them out with each other. We did this a few times and they loved it. They did awesome and had so much fun.

Our Horse Powered Math® lesson today with Shadow was on reading numbers and comparing them using our comparison symbols. The kids worked hard and did a nice job.

Our art project today was a horse wind chime. We also did one last journal entry to share what we enjoyed during the week.

That’s a wrap on our second week of our Summer Sessions. This was such an awesome group of kids and we had so much fun with them.

Week 2 Day 4 Recap Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Session.
The kids started their day by making thank you notes for our volunteers. We have been so lucky to have such amazing volunteers helping us out this week and last. After, we headed into the arena for our morning routine, brushing Roury and our breathing activities. We did a quick check in to see their thoughts on what they liked best this week, Tie Day was the most popular, followed by the obstacle courses, hanging with the herd and learning activities.

Horse Powered Reading® was up next. Group one had fun playing with words. One of our teammates was in charge of finding the letters we needed. The rest of the group set the cones up near Roury, who was helping us find the beginning sound (near her head), the middle sound (near her belly) and the ending sound (her tail) of the words we were spelling out. We then played with adding and taking away different letters to see how the word would change. We added different beginning blends and the Magic E. Top became stop, then slop, then slope. They did great with their sounding out the words from beginning, middle and end. Group 2 played a synonym memory game with Roury. We did a lot with sounding out hard words, vocabulary and then finding another word that means the same thing. They had to find the synonym on the memory board. They all did great!

During our snack time, Ms. Sherri read us the awesome book, My Magical Choices - Teach Kids to Choose a Great Day with their Choices. This led us into our SEL lesson on Decision Making. Ms. Tiffany did a fun few rounds of Would you Rather. This is always a fun one. After that we talked about the Stop Light Colors and how they can help us make good choices. RED reminds us to Stop, YELLOW - reminds us to slow down
and think about what we should do. Think "is this a good choice?" Green tells us, once we have the good choice, it's time to GO!
Now remember when making a decisions it’s best to
RED- Stop
YELLOW - Slow Down and THINK
Green - Go ACT after making your decision
Ms. Tiffany then led us in a really fun game of Simon Says that got us really having to think about what action we should or shouldn't do based on whether Simon said to do it or not.

After our free choice time in the arena, which was another fun time of creating obstacles and running through them, it was Horse Powered Math® time. Today was "P**per Scooper Time". The kids had to scoop the "P**p" (the plastic play balls with either numbers on them, addition or subtraction facts or multiplication facts. They had to solve the equation, write the fact family and then share it with their equine partner, which today was Shadow. They had a blast and were doing great with the fact families and identifying numbers.

Lunch time was followed by decorating our special frames that included a pictures with a selected herd member. The pictures Ms. Tiffany took were amazing. Then we did a little fun writing time in our journals by writing about where we would take that herd member on a journey. Our herd members went to the beach, the jungle. on a hike up a mountain, to a farm and to the park. Such creative and fun stories.

QIt is so hard to believe our week is almost over. We have had so much fun with this group.

Our next program offering will be Empowered by the Herd. This 6 week program is geared towards teen girls. The focus will be on healthy choices, building positive self esteem, communication, navigating relationships, managing conflict, and coping strategies. Contact us today for more information by messaging here or emailing [email protected]

Week 2 Day 3 Recap Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Session. Our big start of the day was our Tie Dye T-Shirt Reveal. The kids absolutely loved seeing their shirts as did our volunteers.

We followed our usual morning routine of grounding activities, brushing the littlest herd members and leading them around to practice our breathing strategies, After that it was Horse Powered Reading® time. Group one practiced the cone weave with their "other equine partners" first to practice letter names and sounds on one side and the other part of the group worked on sight words. We worked to see how quickly and accurately we could make it through with the sight words. At the end of practice time, they brought Roury through to teach her the words. They showed great improvement by the end. We switched our spots with Group 2 and Group 1 went off to read with the herd and group 2 came in for their parts of speech task. They sorted our scattered words into 4 hoops, verbs, adverbs, nouns and adjectives. Once they were done, they brought Roury around to each one to teach her the difference and share the examples they found. Then it was Madlibs time. The story created had us all giggling and the two kids that read it aloud to the others did such a great job.

We had a special guest read us our SEL book today, Ms. Sherri. Today's book was Teach Your Dragon How to Make Friends. This was a great lead into our lesson on Peer Relationships and Confidence. After the book and some great discussion, we headed into the arena for some fun. We played Make the Statue Laugh. Everyone circles up and freezes like a statue when they hear the word freeze. One person tries to make everyone laugh without getting in the persons personal bubble space. We had some very serious players who were able to hold their straight faces despite some great attempts to make them laugh. After, we talked about the importance of building each other up with kind words and compliments. The group practiced giving compliments to each other. It was so sweet to hear the kind things they shared with each other.

Horse Powered Math® was next with our barrel racing. We brought in Eliza and Shadow to help us today. Each of the front barrels had cubes with numbers on them. The team selected one cube from each barrel and then led their equine partner to the last barrel to find the sum and make their part part total model. Once they had their answer, they shared with their equine partner. A few friends challenged themselves with multiplication. We worked on building our fact families for those 3 numbers. Another team worked on building teen numbers with a group of 10 from one barrel and digits 1-9 from the other barrel. We had some great math talk today.

After lunch time it was time for our art time, which today was painting something that brings you joy and makes you smile. We have some talented artists. A few had a chance to write in their journals today about what makes them special.

We can't believe how fast this week is going. This is such a fun group.

Week 2 Day 2 Recap Learn & Grow with the Herd. Another busy and fun day with these awesome kids, volunteers and of course our herd. Ricky is doing his best to keep everyone entertained.

Todays highlights…

Positive Affirmation cards made for Soles of Love

Horse Powered Reading® activities Alphabet Train Mess-working on letter names and sounds, identifying words that start with that letter and working on sounding them out.
Group 2 worked on identifying nouns and adjectives on Roury and then moving her around the arena to identify the verb and adverb

SEL Lesson we loved hearing the book What if We all Did That? read by Ms. Cheyenne to kick off our SEL lesson on Decision Making - Expected and Unexpected Behaviors. We took our "other" equine partners (pool noodle ponies and stick ponies) in for this next activity. We worked as a team to read the scenarios and decide if it would be an expected or unexpected behavior. The worked together nicely and made some great choices.

The kids had some free time to explore the arena and had fun setting up obstacles to take their stick ponies over. We loved watching them count to keep track of how fast everyone completed the course and cheering each other on. After that, it was Horse Powered Math® time with our What's the Scoop game and I See the Number ____ . We split into 2 groups. One stayed with Eliza and played, "I See the Number __" This is a fun one where they create different equations. Example I see 6.... 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 tail 1 mane 2+2+1+1 = 6. The other group was having math fun with Shadow- the task was to Scoop a ball from the bucket, solve the addition or subtraction problem, share their answer with Shadow and then find the correct feed bucket (all labeled with numbers) that it went into. Another part of the group worked on number recognition and counting by picking a horse card, identifying the number on the back and counting out that many feed balls to put into the correct feed bin. We then switched and did the same activity with a few group members working on

Tie Dye Time was next and we had a blast! We can’t wait to see their final creations. 🐴

Week 2 Day 1 Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Session

What a fun first day! We love how this group has already connected and are supporting each other. It was awesome to see them all work so well together today.

We started with a fun getting to know you activity. The kids all decorated a name tag that had their name and then 4 things about them they wanted us to know. We all went into the arena and tossed a ball around to each of our students and helpers to learn each other's names and a little about one another. We definitely learned that we have a lot of things in common and also how unique we each are.

Ms. Tiffany then led us in a great grounding exercise. Today's theme was all about big feelings and strategies we could use when those big feelings become too big and we need to find a way to find our calm. We used our senses (hearing, seeing and feeling) to notice the sights, sounds and objects around us. When we have big feelings and we need to find our calm, we can breathe, find 3 things we see, 3 things we hear and 3 things we can feel. This helps us focus our thoughts somewhere else.

After that, we took some time to observe the horses and we did a Notice and Wonder. We noticed how they move their body to get flies away, we noticed that they are similar and different and also learned about the mask they wear and why. This helped lead us into our safety talk about how we move and connect the equines safely.

Roury and Shadow then joined us in the arena and we played a fun game of labeling the horse. We used context clues like in reading to help us identify where parts were that we may not know by using parts we did know. After that we learned how to brush the horses and the different tools we use.

Next up, we had our first Horse Powered Reading® activity which was making our Learning River. This river had lots of obstacles along the way. Each student went through and told their helper what their obstacle in learning may be and we labeled each one. These are things that get in their way while learning. With their group they led their equine partner down the river and stopped at each obstacle and talked about what they could do to get past that obstacle and some strategies they could use to help them. We had some great discussions. They did a great job leading together and getting their equine partner through all the obstacles.

After snacktime, we made our Pool Noodle Ponies. We used these with our sorting activity to give our equine partners a little break. In this activity we discussed different things we can do when we have big feelings, such as drink water, take a walk, or listen to music. We also shared some ideas for what the horses could do when they have big feelings (eat hay, roll in the dirt). They used their Pool Noodle Ponies to ride to the pile, pick a strategy and come back to the Venn Diagram to figure out if it was a human strategy, a horse strategy or both. This led to some great discussions and they loved riding their Pool Noodle Ponies.

Once everyone was done, we talked about the great strategy of breathing. Around the arena were 8 different breathing strategies so they rode their Pool Noodle Pony to each one and practiced their breathing. The favorites were the Snake Breath and the Horse Breath. Tomorrow they will review these with their equine partners.

After lunch, we had a story time with the book, My Magic Breath. Another great reminder about the power of the pause and breathing when we have those big emotions. We talked a bit about the book and then the kids got their own books and read or shared their book with the herd. This is always one of our favorite times.

Last activity was our calming jars. This was fun watching them get creative with the colors they chose and their reaction once it was done.

We had 3 special visitors who wanted to see all the fun we were having. A doe and her twins came through the path to say “hi.”

A busy but very fun first day and we can't wait for tomorrow!

We are so excited for our next program offering starting on August 14th. Be Empowered by the Herd is a 6 week program being offered to teenage girls to explore these important skills; coping strategies, navigating relationships, communication, building positive self esteem, healthy choices and managing conflicts . Check out the flyer for more information. The link to our program page on our website to register is in the comments. There are only 6 spots available, so be sure to register soon.

We are in need of 2-3 more volunteers for our Reading with Roury visit with the YMCA next Monday, July 29th in the morning. If you can help us out, please reach out. You would be running the Horse Powered Reading & Math stations with the kids.

We greatly appreciated all of the amazing volunteers that we had help us this week. We could not have made this week happen without you all. Each one of you was amazing with the kids and the herd. Thank you Caitlyn, Jan, Kai, McKenna, Sophie, Sophia and Tiffany!

Day 5 Recap Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Session.

Our hearts our full. When the vision of this program came to us, what we experienced this week was exactly what we were looking to create. A space where kids build confidence with the equines and with their peers and learning. A space where they feel loved and accepted. It warmed our hearts to hear, "I think Shadow really likes me. I think Roury knows I am smart!" A space to learn and grow through movement, collaboration with their peer and equine partners and where they could learn to communicate with each other. We saw all of this happen this week and it was amazing to experience.

Today was our final day with this awesome group. We spent some time today writing thank you notes to some of our sponsors and to our helpers. We welcomed Ricky and Roury in the arena for some brushing and connecting time. Lots of counting by ones and for some skip counting to practice as we brushed our equine partner.

After that we split off into our groups for reading time. Today we worked on the parts of a story. We talked about characters, the setting, the problem and solution. We worked as a team to select the characters, setting, problem and solution and then the whole team worked together to create a story. This one was about Ricky and Olive the donkeys who lived on a pretty farm with lots of trees. Unfortunately Chow Chow the donkey was not very nice to them so they had to figure out a plan to deal with him. It was very sweet.

Snack time and our Social Emotional Learning lesson was next. Ms. Caitlyn had an awesome lesson today for us on how to handle conflicts. She read the story The Zax. We worked as a team to try to figure out a compromise that they could have used to both get a bit of what they wanted. Two of our friends acted this out and we decided if they leap frogged over each other, they would both be where they needed to be. We had some giggles with that one. We then learned the "I feel.... when you... I need you to...." statements. We each got a scenario card and worked with a helper to complete our I feel statements for that scenario. They practiced what they would say with the equine partners and then acted them out with their helper. We have some fabulous actors and actresses. We did this a few times and they loved it. They did awesome and had so much fun.

Next up was pizza time. Thank you to one of the families for ordering these for us all. It was so kind and such a fun treat. After lunch we headed back into the arena for comparing and ordering numbers. Teams had to select their number and 1 for their equine partner and have the numbers in order from least to greatest. We love watching the kids support each other in tasks.

Our art project today was creating a picture frame for our picture we took with our favorite herd member. We also decorated silly horse faces.

It truly has been an awesome and busy week. Our herd made some great new friends and had fun learning with them.
Looking forward to next week’s session.

A few people have asked us about the Horse Powered Reading® and Math program we use, we wanted to reshare this video as it highlights the reasoning behind a lot of what and why we did this week during our Summer Session experience.

Horse Powered Reading “Horse Powered Reading isn’t just a program;it is CHILDREN who struggle every day,who we have the power to help – power to give hope - power to make school &...

Day 4 Recap of Learn & Grow with the Herd Summer Session.

We started our day with making positive affirmation cards that we are going to share with the Soles of Love program. This amazing program collects shoes for school aged children and these notes are put inside the shoes. The kids were excited to make another child smile with their sweet messages and drawings.

The big excitement of the day was getting to see their creations from yesterday. We had a tie dye shirt reveal time and their reactions were priceless.

Our reading activities today included sounding out words and reviewing letter sounds. One group worked on creating new words with the same word family. Our focus was on "at" words. The team rode their stick pony to the letter pile and brought it back to Roury to add a new beginning letter and sound the word out using Roury as a helper. Group two did a similar activity working on beginning blends to make a new word (sight to slight).

We then took our snack break and had a great lesson with Ms. Tiffany. We started with a fun game of "Would You Rather." Our focus today was on making good choices. During snack time, she shared the book, My Magical Choices - Teach Kids to Choose a Great Day with their Choices! She also taught us a really fun way to think about what to do when we have to make a choice. We connected it to a traffic light. We STOP, then slow down to THINK about our choices and then GO when we have made a choice. We played a game with some different scenarios and had to STOP, THINK and GO as we made the best choice in the situation. After that it was time to head into the arena for a fun game of Simon Says and then Red Light, Green Light.

After lunch we had some farm chores to do. We learned about some of the things we have to do to take care of the herd, including cleaning up after them. This led to our P**per Scooper game. This is another fun one from Horse Powered Math. In this game, each child had a pile that they had to clean up (really it was plastic play balls with numbers or equations on them). They had to bring it back on the shovel, share their answer with their equine partner and then put it in the bucket. They had so much fun and did a great job with their math thinking.

Our art time today was making a horse wind chime and some free draw time.

We are having a blast!

We want to wish a very happy birthday to one of our amazing team members, Caitlyn!! She is our board secretary and one of our service providers serving as one of our mental health team members. We hope you had a wonderful day!! Thank you for all you do to support Hearts of the Herd.