Mon, 22 Dec 2025, 10:00 - 14:00
Greengates Stables
Mays Lane
Barnet
London EN5 2AQ
This session is for children comletely new to horses. You must not have attended a horse experience day before.
A fun and inclusive holiday day for young people to spend the day learning how to care for and train horses and learning how a horse’s mind works. Through working with the horses the young people will improve in confidence, communication skills and teamwork skills.
Join the Strength & Learning Through Horses team to spend a Christmas themed day learning about horses. Our staff team will teach you how a horse thinks, what worries them and what motivates them. You'll use this knowledge to build a relationship of trust with them and train them to undertake a number of fun activities.
Activities might include:
- Putting on head collars and basic horse handling skills
- Grooming the horses
- Ground based horse training activities
- Christmas themed arts and crafts
- A competitive obstacle course to put your horse training skills to the test
- The day will be fun and light hearted and is suitable for young people with no horse experience as well as the more experience horse people, there's something to learn for everyone.
We use Equine Therapy to provide an alternative psychotherapeutic experience and treatment for clients who find it difficult to engage with a therapist or professionals around their mental wellbeing in a conventional way. Our team combines the expertise of Clinical Psychologists with Equine Behaviour Specialists to provide Equine Therapy in a private and confidential facility.
Young people are encouraged to work with the horses in an unstructured way, usually the horses are loose so they can demonstrate their natural behaviours.
The horses naturally respond to the emotional issues people bring to sessions and reflect the emotions of people in their own behaviour. The young people are asked to reflect on the behaviour they see from the horses and their own role in influencing this behaviour.
By projecting their emotions on to the animals, the young people open up about their own emotions and life experiences; giving the mental health staff the opportunity to facilitate therapeutic conversations to help the young person think about their personal challenges, learn to identify and manage their emotions and develop coping strategies for the challenges they face.
Child must be able to manage without additional support