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January is loud with bold intentions, whilst March carries the promise of movement and growth.
But February sits quietly in between, the shorter days tentitively beginning to lengthen, whilst the land is still resting, life is still hidden.

Many of us feel this tension in our own lives at this time of the year. It’s tempting to look ahead now, however, February still asks of us to stay focused exactly right where we are. To hold steady rather than to hurry, and to listen more deeply; to ourselves, and to God, to the season we are actually in.

February can teach us that love does not always look like progress. Often, it looks like faithfulness.

Small acts done with care.
Attention given where it will not be noticed.
Choosing presence over performance.

In the Christian calendar, early February is marked by Candlemas, a feast that remembers the presentation of the infant Christ in the Temple, and Simeon’s words about light held in waiting. It sits at a gentle threshold: Christmas has passed, Lent has not yet begun, and the light is returning slowly rather than suddenly.

Candlemas is not about completion, instead it is about recognising what has been given, and learning how to carry it forward faithfully.

If you would like a place to begin, you can download the free February Joy page , a single sheet designed to offer encouragement for listening deeply and tending nature-touched February days.

Also available is my latest resource, Abiding Light a Candlemas Companion, a contemplative devotional . Rooted in Scripture, the Christian tradition, and the natural rhythm of the year, this companion invites you to pause and acknowledge the Light that has already been given, and to abide.

Through gentle reflections, Scripture readings, prayers, a simple candle rite, and optional journaling or non-writing practices, this companion offers space to rest with Christ as the Abiding Light: present even when faith feels faint, unclear, or quiet.

This is a book to move through slowly, or to return to when words are hard to find, a guide for recognising Christ’s presence in ordinary days and carrying that Light forward with us into the season ahead.

A companion, not a programme to follow, offering gentle structure without pressure:

• space for simple reflection
• small, do-able practices
• a way of noticing love as it is lived, rather than measured

If this sounds just like your cup of tea, Abiding Light is currently available for $6 as part of the Winter Sale.

Both resources are offered in the same spirit: to help you to stay with what is already growing in your spirit, and to tend it gently.

Here’s to a peaceful February.

From my home to yours,

There is a quiet moment in the Christian year that often goes unnoticed.

Forty days after Christmas, long after the decorations have been packed away and before Lent has begun to shape our attention, Candlemas arrives. It does not announce itself loudly. It does not demand preparation or resolution. Instead, it adds a pause.

Candlemas is the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple; the moment when Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus into the ordinary faithfulness of the law, and two elders, Simeon and Anna, recognise what others overlook.

They do not rush the story forward.
They do not ask for proof.
They simply notice.

A Feast of Recognition, Not Arrival

Candlemas is often described as a feast of light, but not the triumphant light of Easter morning. It is a much gentler illumination.

This is light recognised rather than amplified.
Light carried quietly into the ordinary days that follow.

Simeon does not rejoice because the world has changed. He rejoices because his waiting has been met. His peace comes not from resolution, but from recognition: this is the Light, and He is here.

For many of us, this matters deeply.

There are seasons of faith where we are not full of certainty or clarity. Where our prayers feels meagre, words are hard to find, and the energy to strive simply is not there. Candlemas does not interpret these seasons as failure. It tells the truth alongside them.

The Light has come into the world, and He remains.

Abiding Light: Faith That Does Not Depend on Feeling

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Christian faith is the idea that light must always feel bright.

Scripture tells a different story. Jesus does not speak of creating or maintaining light. He speaks of abiding.

To abide is not to cling. It is not our effort or performance. It is His presence that does not withdraw when conditions change.

Candlemas names this kind of faith. The Christ-child is not yet teacher, healer, or risen Lord. He is small, dependent, and carried, and yet He is fully Light. Not because of what He will go on to do, but because of who He already is.

This is grace.

Why Candlemas Still Matters

Candlemas falls at a subtle turning point in the natural year, too. Winter has not yet loosened its grip, but the lengthening of days has begun. In many traditional calendars, this was the moment when stored candles were blessed for the months ahead, a deeply practical act shaped by hope rather than certainty.

It is a reminder that faithfulness is often quiet, and that light does not need to be proven in order to be real.

For those of us who are weary, uncertain, or learning to trust again, Candlemas offers a different way forward: not striving toward illumination, but learning to walk with the Light that already abides.

A Companion for the Season

I’ve written Abiding Light: A Candlemas Companion as a gentle guide for this season.

It is not a book to rush through or to complete. It offers Scripture, reflection, prayer, a simple candle rite, and optional journaling or non-writing practices, all designed to help you pause, recognise, and carry the Light forward without pressure.

There is nothing here to master or perform correctly. Nothing that depends upon how you feel.

You may forget the words – nothing is lost.

The Light abides.

Winter Sale Now On

If you’ve been waiting for a quieter moment to explore seasonal resources, the Winter Sale is now on across the shop, including Abiding Light and other contemplative companions for the darker months of the year.

These resources are designed to support gentle, grounded faith that honours real life as it is, not as we wish it to be.

You can explore the Winter Sale from the menu at the top pf the website.

Whether Candlemas is a long-held tradition for you, or a quiet turning you are only just discovering, my hope is that this season offers you rest rather than requirement, and also the reassurance that the Light you need has already been given.

From my home to yours,

THE WINTER SALE IS NOW ON! 20% OFF ALL PRODUCTS

It’s almost Winter Tree Study Week in Exploring Nature With Children.

Here are some helpful links for your studies:

• How to identify trees in winter
• How do trees survive in Winter?
• How do trees survive winter cold?
• Why don’t trees freeze & burst like pipes in Winter?
• How to draw trees in winter : John Muir Laws
• How to draw leaves & winter twigs
• Come Outside : Wood
• Winter Tree Finger Painting

Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.

If you’re over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! The Instagram page is very much about community; think of it as your virtual home school co op! Our community uses the #exploringnaturewithchildren hashtag, & also specific weekly hashtags to enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum. This week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCwintertreeweek

Happy exploring!

A gentle note to let you know that the Winter Sale has now begun , and if you’ve been meaning to stock your shelves for the colder months, this is just the time to do it.

Over time, Raising Little Shoots has grown into a whole library of resources; for nature study, home education, seasonal living, and gentle faith-filled rhythms, and I wanted to highlight the different categories that you can now browse on the website (so that you can head straight to what you actually need).

Nature Study

If you’re craving simpler, steadier nature study, the kind that works in real family life, begin here.
Expect resources that help you get outside, notice more, and build habits gently over time.

Celebrating the Seasons with Children

Seasonal living isn’t required to be Pinterest-perfect to be meaningful. This section is all about creating traditions, rhythms, and small celebrations that help children mark the turning of the year.

The Charlotte Mason Homeschool Planner

A Home education planner that helps you to hold your days with more calm. Planning pages, gentle structure and support for keeping life-and-learning workable.

The Sanctuary of Childhood

A place for child-centred resources that honour wonder, attention, and wholesome formation, without rushing childhood along.

The Sanctuary of Home

Home isn’t just where we live, it’s where we recover, regather, and begin again. This category is for building a home atmosphere that feels steady, comforting, and quietly life-giving.

Nature-Inspired Devotionals for Grown-Ups

For the grown-up heart that wants faith that feels lived . Rooted in the seasons, and the quiet presence of God in our ordinary days.

Free Resources

If you’re new here (or just need something small and encouraging), don’t miss the free library, little pages of help and beauty you can download and use right away.

A Gentle Way to Shop the Sale:

• Choose one resource to support your home rhythm
• Choose one to support your learning rhythm
• Choose one to support you

Ready to browse?

The Winter Sale is now live, and you can explore by category from the menu at the top of the website.

From my home to yours,

I have some lovely news to share:

From Candlemas (Feb 2nd), We will be having a read along of The Hidden Seasons by Tristan Gooley in the Raising Little Shoots Facebook group hosted by the wonderful Maeve. We cannot wait

A gentle start to the New Year, no rushing, just ‘wintering’.

Come and join us, won’t you?

From my home to yours,

Plough Monday is one of those old English days that quietly holds the turning year together.. Traditionally, it’s the first Monday after Epiphany (6th January) the moment when the Twelve Days of Christmas are truly over, and rural life turns back toward the fields and the work of the year ahead. 

A little history

In late medieval and early modern England, communities marked Plough Monday with a lively mixture of faith and folk custom. Parishes kept “plough lights” (candles) burning in church, and in many areas a decorated plough was pulled through the village as people collected money, originally to support the church and the community’s common life. 

Different regions had their own flavour: groups sometimes known as Plough Boys (and other local names) would dress up, perform, and make a cheerful nuisance of themselves, part celebration, part fundraising, part “we’re all in this winter together.” 

Why Plough Monday matters for us

Most of us aren’t heading out to yoke heavy horses at dawn, but we do know what it is to reach that point in January when the sparkle fades and real life returns.

Plough Monday offers a gentle way to re-enter the year without the often brittle pressure of “New Year, New You.” Its message is simpler:

• Start where you are.
• Put your hand to one honest thing.
• Trust that small faithfulness turns into a harvest.

For home-educating families, it’s also a beautiful reminder that learning doesn’t have to restart with a bang. It can restart like arable land: quietly, steadily, almost invisibly at first.

A simple Plough Monday practice

If you’d like to mark the day in a way that fits real life, here’s a small, meaningful rhythm:

1) Light a candle.
Whatever you have to hand. Nothing fancy.

2) A short prayer for the work of the year ahead.

Lord of seedtime and harvest,
bless the work of our hands,
the food that will be grown,
the people who labour,
and the small daily faithfulness of this home.
Turn the soil of our hearts toward what is good.
Amen.

3) Choose one “ploughing” action. 

• Clear one surface in the kitchen.
• Wash the muddy wellies and set them ready by the door.
• Refill the bird feeder.
• Sort one drawer of pencils / paints / nature notebook supplies.
• Step outside and notice what January is already doing (buds, birds, frost, soil).

4) One sentence in your journal (or a family notebook):

• “The ground I’m tending this season is…”
• “The small work God is asking of me today is…”
• “The hope I am quietly planting is…”

A Plough Monday nature study invitation

If you’re out on a walk this week, look for signs of the land’s “not-yet.” January rarely looks impressive, but it is full of hidden beginnings.

Try noticing:

• field edges (hedgerows, seedheads, berries)
• tracks in mud, snow, or frost
• winter birds feeding low
• the feel of the soil: frozen, slick, resting, waiting

This is the kind of seeing that gently restores us, because it reminds us the year doesn’t begin with fireworks. It begins with the patient turning of the earth.

From my home to yours,

Some helpful links for next week’s Moon Study Week in Exploring Nature With Children:

Moon Phases Calendar January 2026

Lunar Sketching by Daniel Mounsey PDF

Moon Phases Demonstration ~ video

Do We Need the Moon? BBC documentary

Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download. 

If you’re following along with the community over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! Think of it as your virtual home school co op! 

To enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum, this week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCmoonweek

Happy exploring!

Lent has a way of asking for our truest attention.

Not the hurried attention we offer while thinking about the next thing. Not the more tense attention that tries to “do Lent properly” and ends up pretty exhausted by week two. But the steady, listening attention of a pilgrim, one foot in front of the other, heart turned toward Christ, willing to be met along the way.

That’s what Lent is: a pilgrimage of the heart.

And if you’re longing for a Lenten practice that feels real ; rooted, Christ-centred, spacious enough for ordinary life, and gentle enough to actually keep, then I created The Pilgrimage Journal: A Companion for the Sacred Path of Lent for you.

This is not a devotional that becomes another thing to keep up with. It’s a contemplative companion designed to help you walk with Christ through the weeks of Lent in a way that is both faithful and doable, with the liturgical season and the natural world around you, working in harmony.

For many of us, the quiet places where God speaks are not always found in perfect stillness. Sometimes they’re found in the maths lesson, on a cold morning walk, beside the kettle, or with tired hands doing the washing up. Sometimes the holiness is not in adding more , but instead in learning to notice.

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A Lent that’s received, not performed

So often, we approach Lent with good intentions and a familiar pressure:

• Choose the right thing to give up.
• Be more disciplined.
• Do more, pray more, read more.

But Lent is not a spiritual productivity plan.

Lent is an invitation to return. To be gathered back to the centre. To walk with Christ into the wilderness places; not to prove ourselves, but to be renewed by grace.

The Pilgrimage Journal is built around weekly invitations, rather than rigid daily assignments. It honours real life: fluctuating energy, family responsibilities, illness, busy seasons, and the simple fact that hearts soften with grace, not imposed schedules.

Some weeks you may write a great deal. Some weeks you might only manage a single sentence offered to God. The journal holds space for all of it.

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What’s inside The Pilgrimage Journal

1) Weekly Pilgrimage Invitations

Each week offers a reflective theme, a gentle guide for your attention.

Not “tasks” to complete, but invitations to receive: to consider, to notice, to pray, to turn your heart toward Christ in a particular way. These weekly rhythms give structure without pressure, which is exactly what so many of us need.

2) Sacred Sunday Entries

The heart of the journal is the Sunday entry, a beautiful weekly pause-point to anchor your pilgrimage.

Each Sunday includes:

• Scripture
• A reflection to guide your inner listening
• Nature-based pilgrimage practices (simple, meaningful ways to encounter God through creation)
• Journaling prompts that invite honest, tender reflection
• A candle-lighting ritual (gentle, grounding, and reverent)
• A themed prayer for the week ahead

Sunday becomes a resting point on your Lenten path, a place to stop, take stock, and turn your face toward Christ again.

3) A Deep Connection to Nature

Lent unfolds as the natural world begins to stir.

Even in the chill and the grey, there are signs of quiet renewal: lengthening light, the first buds, birdsong returning, small green shoots pressing upward. When we pay attention, creation becomes a living parable , not as a substitute for Scripture, but as a tender companion to it.

The Pilgrimage Journal helps you embrace the outdoors (and the view from your window) as sacred space, a place to encounter the steadfastness, gentleness, and creativity of God.

This is especially precious if you’re worn thin by screens and noise and the relentless pace of modern life. Nature invites you back into a slower kind of knowing: seeing, listening, noticing, receiving.

4) Holy Week Reflections

As Lent reaches its deep, holy centre, the journal holds you through Holy Week with dedicated entries for:

• Palm Sunday
• Maundy Thursday
• Good Friday
• Holy Saturday
• Easter Sunday

Contemplative, reverent spaces, helping you remain close to the story, close to Christ, and close to the mystery at the heart of our faith.

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A quiet invitation

Picture this:

A simple Sunday rhythm: a candle lit. A few lines of Scripture. A reflective theme to carry like a small stone in your pocket. A gentle practice that turns your face toward God, perhaps a short walk, a moment at the window, noticing the shape of a bare tree against the sky. A few honest sentences written down. A prayer that gathers you back into grace.

Week by week, not striving, instead returning.

That is what this journal is designed to support: a Lent that is faithful, spacious, and deeply worth living.

Let this be the season you step away from hurry and performative faith, instead delighting in the steady joy of walking with Christ.

Use code LENT20 for a 20% discount on your purchase of The Pilgrimage Journal: A Companion for the Sacred Path of Lent

From my home to yours,

January can feel a little stark, can’t it; all that talk of “new starts” when what many of us really need is warmth, steadiness, and a little kindly encouragement to go slowly.

So I’ve made a small gift for you: a free one-page encouragement for gentle, cosy, nature-touched January days. It’s gentle and simple, a few cosy joys to choose from, tiny nature-noticing prompts, a short blessing, and a “3 lines only” journal practice for the days when that’s all that you have.

If January is asking you to be quiet and faithful in small things, this is for you.

Download here: free: January Joy

From my home to yours,

It’s almost Winter Sky Week in Exploring Nature With Children. 

It’s a lovely week to ease you back into a nature study routine. Here are some links to help with your nature study:

The Snowflake Man ~ A short film about Snowflake Bentley

How Do Snowflakes Form? ~ video

Drawing Fog, Rain, Snow, and Dew ~ video workshop by John Muir Laws

What is Precipitation? ~ video

Winter Clouds Worksheet ~ Twinkl

Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download. There’s a direct link in my profile.

If you’re following along with the community over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello. Think of it as your virtual home school co op! 

To enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum, this week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCwinterskyweek 

Happy exploring!