Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew
*This post contains affiliate links, see disclosure below for more information*
Sometime when I choose to review a product I have a pretty good idea what to expect and how we are going to like it, but Cross Seven Ventures – Homeschool Musical Memory Tool from Cross Seven was a bit different.
When looking over the program, I was unsure if my children were going to really love it or hate it. I decided to give it a try to see if it would help us to be more diligent in our scripture memory work.
Cross Seven Ventures – Homeschool Musical Memory Tool is a huge collection of memory work that covers nine different content areas and is broken up into four cycles. They include scripture, hymns, mathematics, science, history, grammar, Latin, geography, and a timeline. There are four cycles of work for each of those categories.
Getting Started
When we first received access to this content, I had the whole family join me in the living room one evening to check it out. Even my husband decided to listen and see what he thought.
We started with the hymns section because we love hymns and I knew that we would probably enjoy using that section. The voices were lovely and I was well pleased with the selection of hymns. My husband was impressed with the quality of the singing.
Next, we listened to some of the scripture memory work. This was an area that I knew I needed to spend more time on and I loved how easy it made it. The cycle 1 (which we chose because of our history studies) section had three scriptures to choose from. We picked Philippians 2: 1-11 as the scripture that we wanted to memorize together.
After scripture we decided to try the history since it would go along with our regular history curriculum. I started in the middle of cycle 1 with the history lesson that we had completed that week.
The history videos were a bit different from the scripture and hymns and had more of rap or chant style compared to the flowing scripture and hymns. My oldest son really disliked it but my seven year old loved it. He thought it was great and wanted me to add it to his morning work.
We listened to a few selections from the math and grammar sections as well, but decided that starting with the three areas of hymns, scripture, and history would be the best fit for us right now.
Hymns
We started with the Doxology and then added in Great is Thy Faithfulness a few weeks later. The Doxology was a perfect way to start because it is shorter and easy to memorize. I already knew the song because we sang it every week at the church where I grew up.
Great is They Faithfulness is a longer song and broken up into weeks. We have been working our way through that song and enjoy the time spent together singing each morning.
Scripture
I loved that they were done in bigger passages and not just random verses. I feel like you get so much more context.
I appreciated that the words were displayed on the screen to help as we worked on memorization. I also liked that we could listen to the whole passage, but they had it broken down into weekly sections to make it more manageable.
History
I only used the history with my thirteen and seven year-olds because they are covering the same history material. I was not sure how it would go, but they really enjoyed it. They would walk around singing the weeks memory work, especially the seven-year-old. I even found my three year old singing parts of it.
I really appreciated that it tied in so well with our history curriculum and felt like it was a great way to help the information from the curriculum ‘stick’ a little better in their minds.
Other Resources
In addition to the videos, the program contained extra videos with hand motions to help with the memorization. There were also quizzes that you could use to see how well students were memorizing their work. Since we had decided to use this program together as a family a few minutes each morning we did not use the quizzes. However, I think they would have been very beneficial if I was having them work independently.
There were also some fun history videos for kids that were included about some of the different topics. The website said that they were still making new videos and adding to the list.
Conclusions and Opinions
Overall, I was well pleased with Cross Seven Ventures – Homeschool Musical Memory Tool. I loved how easy it made it for me as the parent. I simply logged in each morning and clicked on the right videos. I was so much more consistent with our morning time because it was simple (and the seven year old would not let me forget about it).
If you are wanting an easy way to add in memory work or keep morning time simple, this is a great product. I love that I can pick and choose which subject we will use and that we can do it all at our own pace.
You can see how other Review Crew families used this program by clicking on the graphic below.
Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure
When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.
This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.
The Schoolin' Swag Blog 