Faithful, Dynamic, and Wholesome
While classroom learning is central, we offer so much more at Arma Dei Academy. From academic field trips and STEM camps, to performing arts and athletic activities, we offer comprehensive and diverse experiences beyond the classroom. We recognize that all truth, goodness, and beauty are divine absolutes designed to develop biblical wisdom and Christian virtue by equipping students to know, love, and apply these absolutes to the world around them.
Extracurricular Activities
Arma Dei offers formative academic and enrichment extracurricular opportunities for students that align with and enhance the mission of the academy in accordance with its Statement of Faith. Extracurriculars are for K-12 students enrolled at the academy.
Soli Deo Gloria, led by Miss Lydia Hattrick, is inviting any kindergarten, first, or second grade girl to FUTURE SDG! Your daughter will get to experience what it would be like to participate in SDG when she is old enough through attending two Tuesday practices in January. Your child will be assigned a current SDG dancer to be their mentor and guide throughout the practices. Practice starts with a devotional on what it means to dance for Jesus, then they will learn the SDG warm up dance, and then they will learn their very own future SDG dance. After completing these two practices, your daughter will then be invited to share their dance at our first annual dance concert on April 26th, 2025. T-shirt and special prop included in the cost.
SDG Dance Ministry seeks to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1 ESV). Everything we do is centered around God–from beginning practices with Bible study to dancing to Christian songs to lifting our eyes and hands while we dance to bring people’s attention to God. We dance, not for ourselves, but only to give God glory, our audience of one! For questions, please contact Miss Lydia Hattrick
Who: Female students in Kindergarten – 2nd Grade
When: Tuesdays, January 14th and 21st from 3:45 pm – 5:30 pm
Where: 341 Building – (Kindergarten Classroom/Room#136)
Cost: $50/student for the two classes
Attire: Have your daughter bring clothes she can move in, a healthy snack, and a water bottle
REGISTER HERE by January 12, 2025
In this course, students will continue to build on the skills already gained in the first semester of guitar and learn how to play more songs with greater skill! If you are new to guitar or would like to join apart from my first semester class, send me an email so I can do an interview with your student to see where they stand. For questions, please contact Mr. Michael Kochie.
Who: Students in 4th – 8th grades
When: Mondays, 3:50 – 4:45 pm, beginning January 13 through May 5, 2025
Where: Main Campus 341 Building Latin Room – Room #225
Cost: $520/per student
Questions: Please contact Mr. Michael Kochie
REGISTER HERE by December 30, 2024
Speech Meet
Arma Dei Academy’s students participate in annual in-house and regional speech meet each year in order to provide a platform for students to develop rhetoric skills from an early age. This opportunity makes use of classical educational pedagogy which challenges students to develop the skills of memorization, public speaking, and social grace.
1. Practice your selection every day at home for your parents. Do your very best each time.
2. Stand up tall, with your hands comfortably at your sides in a relaxed posture. Look at your entire audience.Say the required introduction and then pause briefly before you begin the selection. At the end of the selection, hold your last motion or feeling for a few seconds. Then go back to your beginning position as you smile at your audience. Wait a few seconds before returning to your assigned seat.
3. Say your selection with appropriate expression or feeling. If your selection is a happy or sad one, be sure to show that feeling with your facial expressions and your voice. Other feelings that might go with your selection include fear, anger, wonder, worry, surprise or pride. Be sure your facial expression matches the feeling that you are trying to show. Have a friend, parent, or a teacher watch and listen to you and tell you whether you are emphasizing the correct feelings with your voice and your facial expression. Practicing in front of a mirror or having someone take a video of you may also be helpful.
4. The use of gestures will enhance your presentation if they are natural for your selection. Any gestures you use should add to your selection, making it more interesting, more believable, and more enjoyable for you and for your audience. Learn a few natural gestures right away, and practice saying your selection with them every time. Avoid stiff or unnatural gestures.
5. Be sure to speak slowly and clearly. Stop after each thought so that your audience can hear both the words and the thoughts you are expressing. Be careful to enunciate your words or to say every sound (beginning, middle, and ending) of every word in your selection. Using a voice recording device is a tremendous help in learning and practicing your selection. Since you will not be using a microphone, you need to make sure you are able to project your voice for an audience. You may want to practice in a large room and speak loud enough so that others can hear every word from across the room.
6. Since you have memorized and learned your selection, you should show confidence as you speak. Enjoy the experience of sharing what you have learned with the judges.
Recitation & Art Showcase
Reciting knowledge is an important skill. It requires different mental faculties from writing or reading, typical ways of evaluating learning in the 21st century. A memorized and recited piece is more easily “accessed” in the student’s mind than, for example, a string of words encountered in a novel. And learning to speak a poem or a jingle — with clarity and expression — is a foundational skill for all public speaking, useful for the student’s entire life.
At Arma Dei’s annual Recitation & Art Showcase, students in each grade share small samples of what they’ve been learning before an audience of family and friends. It is a highlight of the school year, when the whole community comes together to celebrate our students and to glorify God.
House System
ADA’s house system exists to fufill our school mission by fostering a culture of professionalism, courtesy, and Christ-like service to God and others among students. This culture strengthens our academic environment, prompting students to do their best in preparation for success in their future academic and professional pursuits. The house system achieves these goals in three ways:
- by giving students incentives (house points and corresponding awards) to meet high standards for student competition, comportment, and interaction;
- by creating house-specific, school-wide, and community-oriented opportunities for service to others;
- by giving older students opportunities to lead and mentor younger students within their houses in the pursuit of ADA’s standards for student comportment and service to others.
Arma Dei’s Academy’s four houses are: Avari, Laiquendi, Noldor, and Vanyar, adopted from Elven tribes in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Silmarillion. While certain aspects of each house’s identity are inherited from Tolkein (e.g., Laiquendi are wood-elves), students are encouraged to create and sustain a unique identity for their own house.
House points can be awarded to an entire house or to individual students within houses. They are awarded in four categories: competition, decorum, service, and nobility.