I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
Disclosure: Impressed by Cross Seven, I am now an affiliate, which means I may earn from qualifying purchases.
When I was offered an opportunity to review a subscription of Cross Seven Ventures - Homeschool Musical Memory Tool by Cross Seven Ventures LLC, curiosity caused me to jump at the opportunity.
I had long wanted to see if the power of musical memory work might help my children learn, but, sadly, when my children were at ideal ages for it, I could not take advantage of the variety of programs out there that use it.
Budgets, time, and, to be honest, a child who went through a long period of being averse to any music with lyrics, precluded me from jumping on the bandwagon of awesome musical memory work that so many others I knew were benefiting from.
Fast forward to recent days: all of my children now like music with lyrics of one kind or another, and I remained curious as to how effective music memory work might prove here.
Thus, when I heard that we could try out Cross Seven Ventures - Homeschool Musical Memory Tool, which pairs music and audiovisual slides to help build students' working memory of many bits of knowledge considered foundational to Classical Education and also offers online quizzes and such, I was excited.
What A COMPREHENSIVE, YET FLEXIBLE AND EASY TOOL!
The Cross Seven program is designed to be easy to use and to take minimum time so that families can benefit from it while attending to other life and learning, too.
It includes four cycles of musical memory work that cover Scripture, Hymns, Math, History, Science, English, Latin, Geography, and Timeline.
Each cycle includes 28 weeks of material on a four-year cycle, which means that relaxed families can use it as a spine for all learning, while families that prefer to can use it as a supplement.
We use are using the program here for one child at present and he does it on a laptop, but I have heard others are using it on streaming apps such as AppleTV, Roku, and FireTV, so everyone is able to learn together!
WHAT'S INCLUDED?
With your subscription, you get access to a parent portal where you can access quiz scores for your children.
You also get a plethora of resources for each cycle!
Then, children can move onto other subjects - weekly History, Latin, Grammar, Science, Math, and Geography - as well as quizzes and fun links that can be accessed to expand learning taking place.
If using the program with one child, like we are, the child can simply log on, select a cycle/subject to work on, click on links to view the slides listen, take quizzes, explore, etc.
There is so much potential learning in this program!
Grammar has lessons related to the parts of a speech, the purpose of a sentence, patterns, adverbs, and so much more. It is all presented with simple songs and visuals so students can read along with each song while learning about nouns & pronouns, adjectives & articles, verbs & adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, fundamentals of sentences, prepositions, phases & clauses, helping & linking verbs and more.
Math includes skip counting 1-12, 15, 25, squares, cubes, order of operations, common fractions, decimals, prime numbers, Roman numerals, conversions, percent, commutative, associative, distributive properties, prefixes for metric, Pythagorean theorem, absolute value, place value names, averages, etc.
Latin works through numbers, poems, and scripture to read and sing along with as well as grammar lessons—verbs, declension, Scientia potentia and more, plus the Apostles Creed.
Science covers various laws and scientists; taxonomy, types of leaves, parts of a flower and more and takes but a minute at a time each, concluding in Cycle 4 with Physics: Kepler, Newton, Newton’s Laws, forces, work, energy, simple machines, Archimedes, electricity, Laws of Thermodynamics, heat transfer, Faraday, Maxwell, electromagnetic spectrum, light, sound, Einstein and more!
Geography starts with the continents and oceans; proceeds through the Seven Wonders of the World, Ancient China, and Egypt; expands to Canadian Provinces, U.S. cities, and capitals; and essentially takes you through each continent from ancient to modern times with short, simple videos.
Hymns include classics with rich lyrics to hide in hearts or sing aloud when you wish.
The Timeline has a pdf download to help you create your own timeline as you work through each lesson. Oh, and there are videos with hand gestures to go along with each lesson.
Together, the program provides a gentle approach to Classical Education where young children can simply read, hear and sing their way through all nine subjects that are contained in the cycles, then use quizzes - with matching to map work - to quickly learn and recall what is being taught.
Quiz results, as I said before, can be accessed on a parent dashboard, and students can earn a variety of badges and certificates through the subjects and completing their quizzes.
HOW WE USED IT
When we first got Cross Seven, I introduced it to my just-teenage daughter, hoping she might be interested in it as a way to review and fill in some of her skills and knowledge. She tends not to like online programs, however, and I have no "fancy phone" for playing the musical memory work in the car when she is a captive audience, so my hopes for using Cross Seven with her did not come to fruition.
At the same time, I introduced the program to my tween son. He has been into Math, so asked me if, for now, he can concentrate just on the math portion of it, and, then, in the future maybe do other subjects. I agreed.
When I asked him for his thoughts for this review, he said:
It's a good program, but, of course, the math, which is what I chose to start with, would not be a full math curriculum, because it does not teach you, but gives you drills and memory.
The drills are set up as easy, quick questions and proceed to get harder as they go on. The memory work is presented as songs and is okay. I did not like them much now, but I think I would have when I was littler.
I am interested in trying the other subjects in the fall.
I would recommend it to people ages 7-12, with under nine's probably enjoying it most.WOULD I RECOMMEND IT?
I have browsed other Classical Education musical memory programs before and never seen one delivered like this - with full memory work, quizzes, videos/skits, fun links, a parent portal for quizzes, etc. So, for that reason alone, I think it is worth looking into.
Further, as I popped around our subscription, I was impressed with how much is included in the four-year cycle of work and thought the songs could have truly benefited my daughter and younger son had we had this when 5-10 years ago.
I can see this full program working wonderfully for many families with right-age children and am finding it useful for my older children to cherry pick from.
It is well put together, easy to access/use, and appreciated. Also, i is NOT parent intensive!
All children in your household can login under the same family account. Then children can login to their student profiles and use the product on their own, with you checking in on quizzes through the parent portal. Or, you can join in or complete studies as a group with no need to do a lot of prep or follow up.
Many of us on the Homeschool Review Crew appreciated the ease of this program. Click through to find links to over 20 social media, video, and blog reviews which provide honest opinions and ideas for using Cross Seven.
A NOTE FOR FELLOW CATHOLIC READERS
Since we've been focusing mostly on Math, my son and I have not run into anything that would take further discussion for Catholic families.
It is a Christian, not Catholic, resource though, so, like with all such resources, I suggest that if theological questions come up, you simply address them, and also, add whatever additional expressly Catholic teaching/memory work/hymns you wish.
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