Cross Seven: A Review

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Laura of Cross Seven about the possibility of a review. I was thrilled to accept, because our family is switching to the Claritas memory work for this coming year, and I had been eyeing Cross Seven for several weeks. Laura provided me access to the platform in order to provide this review.

The first thing that was really helpful for me to understand is that Cross Seven is an affiliate, but not an arm of Claritas Publishing. I was familiar with Classical Conversations and their CC Connected program, and in ignorance I believed Cross Seven and Claritas were similar. I was wrong! If anything, Cross Seven is most like the CC app, but I believe it offers a bit more in terms of content available to subscribers.

Claritas Publishing has created all of the memory work used by Cross Seven to enhance a weekly meeting as well as home study, while Cross Seven has created the technological aspect of that program and has permission to utilize all of the Claritas memory work. However, it’s good to keep in mind that Claritas Publishing and Cross Seven are separate entities.

Laura from Cross Seven was a joy to speak to about the program! Cross Seven began as a way for her to support her child, an auditory learner, in their family’s desire to embed the Claritas Memory Work into her brain. Cross Seven is designed using music and slides to help students acquire the memory work and it does a very effective job of accomplishing its mission!

When you come into the site, you can select your cycle, then go through the weekly memory work. Each link takes you to a slide show of the memory work (including hymns and Scripture) that you and your students can explore. Additionally there are skits performed by children to bring more light onto a subject. My kids particularly enjoyed the skit about Martin Luther (especially the part where the actor threw his papers into the air after discovering that the Bible doesn’t actually require works in order to receive grace for salvation!).

We did a test run of Cross Seven by by going through the memory work for one week at least once a day. My kids (ages 7, 9, 11, and 13) loved the different songs and it was neat to see them make the connection that the content was the same regardless of the tune (for example, the continents and oceans song offered by Cross Seven was different from the song that they had learned previously – they like Cross Seven better!). The songs are catchy and there is enthusiasm in the singer with how the songs are presented, like turning their voice all growly when singing “Following the Pax Romana.”

I enjoyed the ease of using Cross Seven and am very excited to add this to our homeschool this year! Claritas Memory Work offers 28 weeks of memory work per year on a four year cycle. This coincides well with other pieces of curriculum we really enjoy like the Story of the World. Each week contains memory work chunks in the subjects of Scripture, Hymns, Math, History, Science, English, Latin, Geography, and Timeline.

Cross Seven is a subscription program, so please check with their website for the most current pricing. Cross Seven offers a one day free subscription so families will be able to check it out and see if it’s a fit before fully committing. (https://www.crossseven.org/) I also very much appreciate that Laura offers discounts for families of full-time pastors, full-time missionaries, military, and first responders.

Have you all used Cross Seven? What would you add to this assessment?

Facebook Comments

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: