Beyond Academics
Art
We believe in a creative God, who wants us to appreciate and nurture our creativity. He’s given us a world of form, shape, color, pattern, and beauty. The art curriculum helps students learn to recognize, enjoy, and evaluate the aesthetic side of God’s creation. Students explore different mediums for artistic expression, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, jewelry, weaving, textiles, stained glass and mosaics. Students are introduced to art history, learn to identify art by well-known artists, and discuss differences in art from different cultures.
Music
Music education at our school centers around a desire for the passion of music to touch the hearts of God’s people. Our students are taught basic music history and theory, as well as the role of music in worship and in biblical history.
All students have general music once a week. Fifth graders may also try different musical instruments – including flute, clarinet, and trumpet – through instrument exploratory lessons. An instrumental band program is offered to middle school students twice a week during school hours. All-school programs include Grandparents’ Day, Christmas Family Gathering (an intimate celebration of Christ’s birth with school families), and a Spring Fine Arts Celebration. Typically, fifth through eighth graders participate in a Fine Arts Day with other area Christian schools, where they can perform a prepared piece of music.
Physical Education
Physical education at AACS promotes physical fitness and Christian discipleship through sports. In elementary school, we center around the concepts share, care, and play fair. In middle school, we build on those concepts as we focus on skill improvement, attitude, knowledge, and sportsmanship.
Activities include soccer, football, floor hockey, square-dancing, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, and badminton. These activities teach students basic movement skills, how to care for their bodies, how to enjoy fitness, and how fitness and sports can be used to vigorously serve God and others. We want students to learn how to incorporate fitness into their lives, whether they become accomplished athletes or exercise for personal enjoyment.
To promote fitness, we offer a noon running club as a supplement to the physical education program for grades 1 through 5. This national program encourages children to do age appropriate lap runs during lunch recess. Many children run additional laps. Parents have indicated students are more fit because of this program. Students are rewarded for mileage with tokens, medals for the 50 Mile Club, and trophies for the 100 Mile Club.
All students participate in Field Day activities with other Christian schools in southeast Michigan.
Middle school students are expected to be physically active three times a week outside of class. Many students fulfill part of that requirement through extracurricular sports. The middle school curriculum also includes a health unit.
Extracurricular Sports
Sports Programs
Ann Arbor Christian School is part of a league with other private schools, including St. Paul Lutheran, Emerson, Washtenaw Christian Academy, Rudolf Steiner, and Spiritus Sanctus. Middle school students (and in some cases fifth graders) can participate in a variety of after-school sports, including soccer, volleyball, basketball, and track and field. Varsity teams are made up of seventh and eighth graders; junior varsity teams are made up of sixth graders and fifth graders for some sports. For girls’ volleyball, girls’ basketball and boys’ basketball only, fifth graders are invited to be part of the junior varsity team.
Our Athletic Director organizes these teams, which are taught by coaches from the school community. In addition, elementary school students often participate in baseball, T-ball, and soccer school teams through area community recreation and education programs.
Service & Outreach
At AACS, we put faith into action. Integrating Christian faith, academic excellence, and service defines Ann Arbor Christian’s educational outlook. AACS seeks to teach and model Christian principles by encouraging students to become sensitive to others’ needs.
Service projects offer a way to apply these principles and teach the importance of caring for God’s world. For example, fifth graders at AACS recently experienced first hand what it means to serve the poor. The students learned about grant writing, wrote to a local foundation asking for money to pay for meals at a local soup kitchen, received funding, and then served the meals. “If one person helps, then others may also start helping. We were following God’s command to help the poor,” explained one student.
Other outreach events have included:
- Raising money for relief work in Haiti
- Doing yardwork for the elderly or for low-income families
- Singing at local retirement homes
- Delivering mittens to a local shelter
- Sponsoring canned food drives
- Collecting cans and bottles as part of Earth Day
- Sending books to a Christian school in Eastern Europe and a public school in South Dakota
- Raising funds for the construction of a well for a village in Ghana