The name Susan Marlow is apparently well-known in homeschool circles for her Circle C Adventure series.

Is it wrong to say that up until this point I was not familiar with her writing? When the newest book in the Circle C Adventures showed up in our mailbox, it was officially the first time that I took notice of her books.

I have a feeling that we’ll be looking into more of these books, especially since she is working on some early readers that I know will be right up McKenna’s alley.

From the Publisher

When innocent horseplay temporarily lands Andi and her friends in jail, they decide that a trip into the mountains will leave their troubles far behind. Accompanied by big brother Mitch and armed with a map showing old gold diggings, they can;t wait to strike it rich. What could be better than two weeks of camping and horseback riding?

But instead of gold they find heaps of trouble — trouble that leaves Mitch gravely wounded. Andi needs help fast. But who can she trust? And what good is a bag of gold when her beloved brother lies near death in the middle of nowhere?

About the Publisher & Author

Kregel Publications is a Christian company that is dedicated to providing books, videos and other resources for the spiritual growth of readers worldwide. Currently, they have over 900 titles available in print, for children up to adult age.

Susan Marlow started writing stories when she was about ten years old. With the publication of the first book in my Circle C Adventures, Andrea Carter and the Long Ride Home, she discovered that is really is more fun to share her stories with others then to keep them to herself! She currently has five books in the Circle C Adventure series and also has early readers in the works. You can visit her at her website ~ Circle C Adventures.

My Thoughts

Trouble with Treasure {recommended ages are 8-12} was on the higher end of where Laurianna felt comfortable reading on her own, so it is one that we are reading together. The story involves girls and horses…so really, that should be enough said when you are thinking about what young girls like to pretend and learn about. :) Even though we received the fifth book in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone, without needing to read the first four to understand the plot/characters.

I love that there is a complimentary unit study guide to go along with the book too! These books would be great to use as unit studies and A Journey through Learning also has lapbooks that go along with each of the books in the series.

Find Out More

Andrea Carter and the Trouble with Treasure is available from Kregel Publications for $7.99. You can read an excerpt of the book here. A complimentary unit study guide is also available .

If you would like to learn more about Kregel Publications and see some of the other books that the company offers, visit their site and browse through their many books.

If you aren’t one who enjoys searching around for different preschool ideas and activities ~ or putting together your own lesson plans, you might want look into Ideal Curriculum. Whether you are a homeschool mom, daycare provider or school teacher, the curriculum is adaptable to various classroom settings.

The products that Ideal offers are focused on music and games with plenty of hands-on activities for {active} little children. The units are already planned out for you, leaving you with little prep time {other than printing}. Units include: transportation, color, weather, all about me, healthy living, animals, community helpers, the world around us, and traditions in our country.

Each of the monthly kits from Ideal Curriculum includes:

• Daily lessons and activities for literacy, math, calendar, oral language, and science/social studies
• Teaching guides
• Workbook
• Music CD or mp3s
• Science, sight words, and concepts about print books
• Supplemental activities

We’ve listened to the music from the transportation unit that we downloaded and also printed off some of the activities to use with our boys. There were a few that we looked at on the computer rather than printing because of the amount of ink that it would have taken {a science book}. The graphics were great and appealing to the boys and they love trucks! :)

Find Out More

Ideal Curriculum offers their monthly units in a print version {$55/mo} and also as a download {$30/mo}. If you are interested in downloading a month of  Ideal Curriculum, the company is offering a 10% discount during the month of May. Use the coupon code welovekids during checkout. You can also sign up for a free week of curriculum and try it out for yourself!

Have you ever wanted or purchased something and then found out just a short time later that a friend had it and you could have either traded or borrowed it from them? Or have you had something that you want to offer to others as a resource, but didn’t want to bombard them with emails or make twenty different phone calls to make it known?

Homeschool Crew members were introduced to a new site called Lobster Network. If you have an allergy to shellfish, don’t worry ~ it has nothing to do with seafood {grins}. LobsterNetwork is a way to keep an online inventory of the gazillion resources that you have and ‘network’ with others to share, borrow, trade, buy and sell those things ~ letting the website track everything for you all without any cost to you or fees for buying/trading/selling. Are you following me?

Lobster Network stands for:

How it Works

You can sign up for a free account quickly and easily and start searching for items that you may be looking to find. The search feature is super-simple too. Items can be searched for by name, category, purpose {lending, trading, free, for sale, or wanted-to-buy}. You can also search to find items that are close in proximity to you.

I love the concept of the site and have entered a few things in as ‘testing’ for me to get a feel for the system and think that it would/could be a great resource. My biggest hold-back at this point is actually sitting down to {ahem} do it. That, in no way, is any reflection of the company {grins}. This would be a lovely summer project for me to do when I’m organizing all of our school stuff this summer ~ and then network with a bunch of you ladies!

Find Out More

Did you catch the fact that Lobster Network is FREE? Definitely worth signing up for a free account. If you happen to have a lot of free time on your hands and want a much more detailed explanation of the program, rather than my ‘sum-up’ version, you can download a 27-page pdf file from the Lobster Network site. They also have some video tutorials for some more behind-the-scenes information to help you out.