ELECTIVES OVERVIEW
Fortis Academy’s fine arts and physical education offerings are essential to a Christian, classical education that seeks to serve the whole person – heart, soul, body, and mind. Our programs emphasize building creative skills across various disciplines while aiming to cultivate a refined aesthetic sensibility in our students. Fortis fine arts programs and performances are also important in helping students discover, grow, and share their God-given artistic gifts and talents.
Grammar students (K – 5th grade) have the option of participating in electives on Fridays from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. Logic and Rhetoric students may participate in Fine Arts Electives after school.
ART
As a classical Christian school, we value the arts and want to encourage creativity and a love for beauty in our children. Throughout the year, students will create many projects using a variety of media. Projects will be focused on giving children experiences with each of the art elements: line, shape, color, form, space, value, and texture. Students will have the opportunity to work with a variety of materials. Various media will include: pencil, marker, tempera & acrylic paint, watercolor, oil pastels, chalk pastels, block printing, mosaic, weaving, clay, and paper mache. Students also incorporate art inspiration from literature. In the younger grades some projects will be inspired from classic picture books.
Art history is a component of the curriculum as well. Students will enjoy beautiful art through the ages as they explore works from various artists and genres. Students will look at art from the Ancient world including Egyptian, Greek and Roman Art, as well as Medieval Art, Renaissance Art, Romanticism, Impressionism, and other artists up to modern times. Several of our projects will be done in the style or technique of the various artists studied.
THEATER
Students learn the basic tools of drama and how to use them through interactive games and lessons. These lessons focus on cultivating creativity, spacial awareness, dynamics of voice, building confidence, storytelling, and teamwork. Students work to increase their theater vocabulary and terminology, along with learning stage direction. They learn the benefits of encouraging one another in a constructive way.
Older students start to develop improvisational skills along with memorization. They begin to learn the various components of a theater production, including the various roles needed in theater other than the actor. Kindergarten through 5th grade students have the opportunity to participate in a spring theater production, as well as Theater Camp in May.
SPANISH
The goal of embarking upon study of a second language is ultimately fluency. Time and effort are key, and most of us struggle as adults learning to think in another tongue. Exposed not until our later school years, we may find ourselves already “hardwired” for our first language.
The purpose of second language education for grammar-aged children however, is not really to develop fluency, considering that young children are still acquiring their own first-language grammar and vocabulary. But they do retain from infancy an amazing God-given ability. The dendrons in children’s brains, which work a little like wires in a lamp cord, switch with relative ease from their first language neural pathway to create a second one for the new code. The dendrons literally “unwire” themselves from the English neural path and begin “rewiring” themselves in the new linguistic direction. Where adults feel the mental gears grinding as pathways are laboring under construction, our kids’ brains take the rumble strips in stride. So, if we’re not aiming for fluency, what is the point of experiencing other languages in the early years? Early language (any will do) exposure lays the groundwork for success later. That future code may well be different, but the “how to” will already be in place.
MUSIC
In this class, children are exposed to the many facets of music. Each month a new hymn is presented with historical information about the writers. By following along to the music, the skill of reading from hymnals is practiced. Percussion instruments are used to first instill a sense of beat, then explore rhythms in songs. Basic note values are learned and practiced with games. We look at lives of composers and listen to their great works along with studying about the families of musical instruments one would see in the orchestra. Vocal anthems are learned with a goal of performing for an audience at end of semesters. We also dig into scripture memorization by putting bible verses to a beat. The goal is exposure in a broad sense with some fun worked in as well.
LOGIC & RHETORIC THEATER PRODUCTION
Upper-level students continue to practice the basic tools of drama along with increasing their improvisational skills. They apply their knowledge of theater and their drama skills as they work on a group production or smaller skits and monologues throughout classes culminating in a production or showcase at the end of the semester. Lessons consist of developing a character and analysis, memorization, various acting techniques and methods, theater roles and vocabulary, along with discovering how the arts can be used to glorify God and point to our creator.
Students involved in productions are required to attend after school practices each semester to be determined by director. Logic and Rhetoric students present productions at the end of each semester, including student-driven performances at the Spring Fine Arts Showcase.
