Claritas

[lexi]

Has anyone used their products before? Here's a link Claritas Classical Academy

 

I love the idea of Classical Conversations but joining a group is not a good fit for my family right now. (And it's not in the budget anyway...)

But I would love to add more memory work into our day. 

I toyed with the idea of just using CC materials at home. But this program looks really neat and their maps look really beautiful. 

 

Please share your thoughts!!!

 

 

[Insertcreativenamehere]

This is the first I've heard of it, but I like the sample of their memory work!

[lexi]

This is the first I've heard of it, but I like the sample of their memory work!

 

I really like it too! I think my kids would love it and maybe we could actually be more consistent with memory work. 

 

Schedule

[Ms.Ivy]

I just use the Cross Seven videos. It makes memory work and learning the history timeline super easy. Some of the songs are groaners, but all in all it is worth every cent for my family. We did a whole cycle this school year and I am happy with how much my kids memorized, especially since it didn't add anything to my teaching load (other than streaming a video to the TV each morning). I do not use their printed books. I use the video memory work as a review system, and only spend about 20 minutes once a week talking about the new material to memorize, because we learn about it in our other school lessons. I think the combo of songs and chants with nice visuals and hand motions works pretty well.

[lexi]

I just use the Cross Seven videos. It makes memory work and learning the history timeline super easy. Some of the songs are groaners, but all in all it is worth every cent for my family. We did a whole cycle this school year and I am happy with how much my kids memorized, especially since it didn't add anything to my teaching load (other than streaming a video to the TV each morning). I do not use their printed books. I use the video memory work as a review system, and only spend about 20 minutes once a week talking about the new material to memorize, because we learn about it in our other school lessons. I think the combo of songs and chants with nice visuals and hand motions works pretty well.

 

Thanks for telling me about the videos. I'll have to check those out! I was thinking about the CD's for our homeschool and we would review them together after lunch. I don't know. I want to be more consistent with memory work and I'd like it to be all planned out for me. 

Schedule

[Guest]

I have been looking at them for months. I haven't bought anything though because in both cycles Im interested in, one of the components is perpetually oos.

[Amy in KS]

I love it!  I think it's better than CC because the history sentences coincide with SOTW and Elemental Science Logic Stage.  I get together with a couple other families and we do memory work, elemental science logic stage experiment (Earth and Space because we're doing cycle 2), the appropriate IEW history theme book, and an art lesson from Alisha Gratehouse.  It works well!

[Finlandia]

I use both. We've used CC since the beginning of this school year and just added Claritas a few weeks ago. There are things I like better about each one.

Things I like better about CC materials:

- Timeline Song - DD loves this! She'll listen to it just for fun (so will DH). I think it's worth buying one of the audio CDs just for this. Claritas doesn't have the timeline put to music. 

- CC puts some things to music, but also has each item recorded simply spoken, whereas Claritas only has the memory work put to song. 

 

Things I like better about Claritas: 

- 4 cycles instead of 3. The cycles match up very easily with SOTW (in my very limited experience). And with 4 cycles they cover so much more history than CC's 3 cycles (especially considering Cycle 3 for CC is primarily US history) 

- Each week's memory work includes Bible passages and a hymn. CC technically has Bible as part of the memory work, but it's not on the audio CDs or included in the weekly work. 

- The Bible passages use ESV, whereas CC used KJV. 

 

Those are the key things I like. I do very little at home with them other than have DD listen to the audio CDs. She likes both. The science, English grammar, and math components of each one are very similar. 

 

Another resource I like for memory work is the book Living Memory by Andrew Campbell. Claritas actually used that book for a lot of their material.