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.
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.”
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:
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.
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.
4) One sentence in your journal (or a family notebook):
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:
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.
So often, we approach Lent with good intentions and a familiar pressure:
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.
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.
The heart of the journal is the Sunday entry, a beautiful weekly pause-point to anchor your pilgrimage.
Each Sunday includes:
Sunday becomes a resting point on your Lenten path, a place to stop, take stock, and turn your face toward Christ again.
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.
As Lent reaches its deep, holy centre, the journal holds you through Holy Week with dedicated entries for:
Contemplative, reverent spaces, helping you remain close to the story, close to Christ, and close to the mystery at the heart of our faith.
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!
FLASH SALE! USE CODE FLASH20 – valid until the 21st of December
Next week will be the Twelve Days of Christmas in Exploring Nature With Children!
Use the chapter to make the most of your time in nature and with each other.
The Twelve Days of Christmas: Traditional carol
What are the Twelve Days of Christmas?
The Twelve Tweets of Christmas: Radio 4 “Tweet of the Day has been entertaining early morning listeners to the Radio 4 schedule every day since 2013, but this Christmas we will delight in an avian offering of the well known song Twelve Days of Christmas. On the first day of Christmas so the song goes, a true love sent a partridge in a pear tree. As actress Alison Steadman suggests as ground birds, partridges are not known for their amorous arboreal perching. Why a partridge in a tree could have many meanings, but given the song is of possible French origin, the French or red-legged partridge seems an ideal candidate as sitter in a pear tree.”
Happy exploring!
FLASH SALE!
Use the discount code: FLASH20
Raising Little Shoots originally began as a blog to record our days as a home educating family around 20 years ago. It allowed me to connect with like minded mums, and to share our family’s home education journey, along with my love for all things nature study, in the pre-Instagram days!
Since those early days, I have had the joy of connecting with so many wonderful families, and Raising Little Shoots has grown into an incredible world-wide community. This community encourages me day after day, & I’m honoured that you choose to be a part of it.
I appreciate you so very much for being with me on this journey of exploring the natural world around us. Thank you, most of all, for your encouragement & friendship. You have no idea how much it means to me.
My books are written to deepen the connections both with your children, and with the natural world, and, in my newer devotionals, your deep faith connection.
It will be valid until the 21st of December, so please snap it up before it ends.
From my home to yours,
Lynn
To help you to celebrate the approaching Winter Solstice on the 21st of December, there’s a free ‘Signs of Winter’ journal resource for you to download. Perfect for a winter nature hunt!
Happy exploring!
Lynn
There’s a particular kind of tired that settles in around Christmas time for me.
Not the “I stayed up too late wrapping” sort (though that’s real too), but the deeper one, the kind that comes through the darkest weeks of the year.
And yet… if you’re anything like me, you still long for something that feels solid, holy, and unforced.
Not a big, shiny spiritual overhaul.
Not a list of perfect practices that you’ll “keep up with” until January 3rd.
Just a small, steady light.
A candle. A verse. A moment of quiet.
A way to keep your heart turned towards God when life is full, messy, tender, and loud.
Introducing: The Winter Light Bundle.
It’s a gentle devotional journey that carries you through the whole winter threshold, from Christmas to Candlemas, in three doable parts.
Purchased as a bundle, the three resources together are $21. ($27 when purchased separately.)
Because Christmas isn’t one day. It’s an entire season.
This devotional is for the days after the big moment, when the world moves on, but your soul is still trying to catch up. Each entry follows a comforting rhythm (so you don’t have to think or plan): a Scripture anchor, a gentle reflection, a simple nature-based practice, and a candle-lighting prayer.
It’s like being given a hand to hold through the holy hush of Christmastide.
I know the New Year can feel like pressure.
Goals. Reinvention. “Be your best self.”
It’s utterly exhausting.
This is different.
Word for the Way is a gentle devotional that helps you discern a guiding word for your days. not as a productivity tool, but as a prayer. A way of listening. A way of asking: “Lord, what are You inviting me into this year?”
Soft. Spacious. Grounded.
This is for the stretch of winter that can feel the hardest: the long middle.
The celebrations are done. The weather is still grey. The energy is low. And yet… beneath the surface, something is beginning.
This journey walks you from Midwinter to Candlemas with a gentle structure and a sense of sacred meaning , without demanding daily perfection. Think of it as tending the hearth: small faithful acts, repeated quietly, until warmth returns.
This is for you if:
No perfection required. No “falling behind.” No guilt.
Just light, offered again and again.
If you like a tidy plan, here’s the natural flow:
But you can also do it in the way real people do:
start late, skip days, come back, light a candle anyway.
This bundle is built for that.
From my home to yours,
