Circle C Stepping Stones Books
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One of my goals, as a homeschool mom, is to introduce my children to a variety of good books. I love reading new books, so I was excited at the opportunity to review Andi Saddles Up and Andi Under the Big Top. These books are the first two books in the Circle C Stepping Stones series, written by Susan K. Marlow and published by Kregel Publications.
This review came at the perfect time. When I originally planned out our homeschool year, I chose a book for February that ended up being too mature/adult for Hannah. I was wondering what to replace it with when I saw these Circle C Stepping Stones series books.
These books have such an innocence about them that is rare these days.
Andi Saddles Up is the first of six books in the Circle C Stepping Stones series. The main character, Andi Carter, is a nine-year old girl living on a ranch in the late 1800’s. Andi is excited that she is finally old enough for her own horse, Taffy. She meets a new friend in this book, but the friendship is tested due to a family feud over ranch boundaries.
Andi Under the Big Top is the second book in the Circle C Stepping Stones series. In this story Andi is excited to see the circus. She is a sweet, friendly girl so she naturally meets a friend working at the circus. Andi discovers that her new friend is in trouble, he is stuck working for the circus. She needs to help him find his freedom and way home.
How we used the Circle C Stepping Stones Series
We used these stories as part of Hannah’s language arts curriculum. Every homeschool parent knows that good literature can be an excellent way to learn vocabulary and check comprehension skills. Most of the time that means the homeschool parent needs to read the book while making note of vocabulary words and creating questions for each chapter.
These books are different though. Susan K. Marlow did the work for us! She created activity pages for the first two books in the series. I love, love, love this! The activity guides not only contain vocabulary words and comprehension questions, but also math, science, and history activities.
Hannah reads extremely well, so she read the stories independently each day. We discussed what she read and compared life for Hannah now to life for Andi in 1877.
Hannah is slightly above the recommended age of 7-10, but she still enjoyed these stories. Each book is about 100 pages, so they were pretty quick reads for her.
I printed out the Activity Pages for both books and stapled them into a packet. Hannah was not required to complete every page, but she always answered the comprehension questions. I also chose a few other language art related pages to assign.
While we used these books as part of our language arts curriculum, they would be fantastic resources for history lessons related to the late 1800’s. Each book contains a section called History Fun with a little extra historical detail. The books are an excellent historical fiction resource told from the perspective of a child.
We will be studying this period in history later this year, so I will be ordering more of Susan K. Marlow’s books.
Have you read any of the Circle C books?
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