Cross Seven Music Memory Tool ~ a Crew review

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Music is a fabulous tool to use for students to memorize material. My daughters all caught things so much faster when we used music and singing is constantly heard around our home. Cross Seven has created a tool to help students with their memory work. The Cross Seven Ventures – Homeschool Musical Memory Tool is intended to help students utilizing a classical education program or as a supplement to other curriculum options.

The Homeschool Musical Memory Tool includes the following subjects:

• Scripture
• Hymns
• Timeline
• History
• Science
• Math
• English Grammar
• Latin
• Geography

Cross Seven’s program follows the typical 4-year classical education cycle and is aligned to the Claritas Publishing curriculum. Each year of the cycle has 28 weeks of videos in each subject area. The videos are all short (from about 15 seconds to a minute or two) and many repeat the memory sentences within the single video.

After purchasing a subscription, the videos are available on the Cross Seven website or can be accessed on Roku TV, Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV. The set-up instructions on the Cross Seven website are simple to follow and allowed us to set up the channel on our TV quickly. You can navigate by cycle year and topic or by cycle year and week. There is also a timeline section.

cycle year 3 subject videos

cycle year 3 weekly videos

We were most interested in the hymns (as I said, we love to sing), scripture, and the science (particularly the chemistry sentences in the Cycle 3 year). I was hoping to use these to supplement what we were currently are doing. The hymns are a combination of melodies we know and melodies we don’t. It was kind of interesting to hear what others sing for some of the hymns. The scripture uses melodies and translations different from what we typically use and so these were not as useful as I had hoped. The chemistry videos were simple sentences set to music. Actually, this is what all the subject areas seem to be – a simple sentence set to a chant or melody.

This program will be most useful for those who are using this particular curriculum. It will align exactly and be set so the memory work is just a play and go feature. It will also work really well for other classical education curriculums. When using it as a supplement, you have to find the topic you want to view. The search feature on the TV channel was not helpful for this as I searched several topics (for example: chemistry and atoms) and got no results, though I know there is a particular song containing the word atom. You can see what is in each section and cycle on the website.

Our daughter was at the upper end of this range (suggested for K-6) and we are not using the classical curriculum. We did not find this as helpful as we had hoped. Part of it was not finding things to align with what we were doing. I believe it would be helpful for the songs to be done with children’s voices, as this is aimed at children’s memory work, rather than a highly trained, adult, female voice, which is much harder for children to sing along with. That would great increase appeal to those at the upper end of the age range.

Please do note that there are pledges included in the opening section of the website that not all Christians use. I would not want my girls accessing those. I did not see them on the TV streaming, though I could have missed that. The website navigation is a bit different than the TV access. You can still access by cycle and then by either subject or week, as you can see in the image below. You also have access to some fun links. This includes things like a reading list to go along with topics, a game to print and play, and a whole host of YouTube video links related to topics covered each week of the cycle.

On the website, there is a parent dashboard where you can add students. This is how you can track student’s progress through quizzes. We did not utilize this feature.

This program is one that can find a lot of application and use in the classical education arena. If you are using the Claritas Publishing curriculum or any classical education curriculum, you should visit the Cross Seven site to learn more and also visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read about what other families have thought about this program and how it worked for their families.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Tagged: Elementary, music, reviews, TOS