TOS Review: Kregel Publications’ Circle C Series

 

We had a wonderful time reviewing Kregel Publications new Circle C Ranch series. The Circle C Ranch is all about Andi (a young girl in 1874) and her faithful horse Taffy. There are four books in this series:

• Andi’s Pony Trouble
• Andi’s Indian Summer
• Andi’s Fair Surprise
• Andi’s Scary School Days

There are two more books slotted to debut in August of this year.  Each book is a paperback with approximately 75 pages and the cost of each is $4.99.

The Circle C Ranch is designed for children ages 6-8 and would be considered an easy reader. For our family I used it as a read aloud with my two younger children ages 5 and 3. We had recently completed a Laura Ingles Wilder book so this went along well with what they had already learned. The Circle C Ranch is a spin off from the Circle C Adventures in which Andrea (Andi) is older.  The books in the Circle C Adventures series are designed for ages 9-14. Both series’ were written by Susan K. Marlow

The book we read was Andi’s Scary School Days. The story was about little Andi’s first day of school in the local one room school house. She’s a true outdoors girl and going to school is not her idea of fun. But little Andi learns some valuable lessons as she makes mistakes and new friends.

The end of the book has “A Peek into the Past” to discover what school was like for children in those days. One of the most amazing parts about this series is the special activities that come with each book. They are available free online at andiandtaffy.com We did all of the activities for our book and they included a vocabulary word match, a schoolroom map, schoolhouse maze, and McGuffey's Eclectic Primer for Young Children.

The kids colored the pages of their primers and I cut them out and made them into little individual booklets. I loved this because it showed us how the children learned to read in those days. It was such a simple procedure and it seems we’ve actually made it hard at times. (I know all kids do not learn the same and although this primer would work well with some of my kids it would most certainly not work for all of them).

If you would like to see what other homeschoolers enjoyed about the Circle C Ranch series, click here.

**Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I received this product free of charge, in exchange for my honest opinion/review. For more honest reviews from real homeschoolers, visit the TOS Crew website.