Arts of the Swordsmen (AOTS) Planning Meeting: On Thursday, January 21, we will have two information and planning meetings about AOTS: at 4:00 and again at 6:00 to allow as many families as possible to come at whichever time best fits their schedule. We do want to showcase any artistic talents that your son has, but we will also create opportunities for him to participate, such as last year we trained students who never before did a STOMP performance and they put on a fantastic show! Here is a video of that STOMP performance:
Here is a link to a YouTube playlist that has videoclips of each act from last year's AOTS.
The agenda for this meeting on Jan 21 is to share information about the goals of AOTS and get a first estimate of the types of talents our students want to showcase. We would also want to know if any of our families have any talents on-stage or behind-the-stage that they can share or know of others outside of IA who would be willing to help us.
We will also need to form an organizing committee whose subtasks will include helping to monitor or lead student rehearsals, organizing volunteers for the night of the performance, and assisting with fundraising such as finding donated items to raffle off and selling ads in the Playbill. Can you help?
During the AOTS event, we will also recognize students with high academic achievements (honor roll) and athletic achievements (such as MVPs for each sport). We are planning to have the AOTS in early May and can confirm its date soon after we get final approval from the venue.
Please take a moment to let us know which of the two AOTS planning meetings you can attend by clicking the SignUpGenius button below or if you can't make the meeting but do have a way to help, then also use the comment section on the SignUp to let us know that.
Much thanks to Travis and Beckie Kiker for leading our young men to boldly express their God-given talents!
Kids Exchange: This is the last week to donate any items that the IPF will sell at the Kids Exchange. A good idea is to give your son a bag and tell him to put in it at least two items that are in good condition that he no longer needs: clothing, toys, video games, books, room furnishings. With a lot of participation, we could collect at least $500! All clothing we bring to the sale has to be on wire hangers, so if you have any of those at your home, please do donate them to us.
We will work on tagging the items during the Work Day on Saturday morning, Jan 16. Please indicate on the SignUpGenius for the Work Day if you can help do that.
Yearbook Club Planning Meeting: We are going to start a Yearbook Club so that our young men can develop a yearbook that best shows their experiences as IA students. For the past two years, it has been a couple of mothers who mostly completed the yearbook and certainly middle-aged women can't do justice to explaining the academic and spiritual experience of our young men! (So say these middle-aged mothers.)
We need young men who are interested in photography or writing to work together to choose the photos that will go into the yearbook and write descriptions of the IA experiences. We already have a lot of photos from the first semester that need to be sorted. We will have a planning meeting to start the Yearbook Club during lunch time on Thursday, Jan 14. Students who are interested in the Yearbook Club should let Mr. Anderson know of their interest. Please talk to your son about this exciting opportunity. We are using a yearbook vendor, treering.com, that has training materials for students to develop their yearbooks. Any parents with project management, photo or scrap booking experience, or who enjoy writing are also invited to help our students.
Spring sports: The Iron Academy Events Calendar (see tab above) has the dates for middle school and JV golf. The spring sports season begins Feb 15. Our Athletic Director, Coach Jon Mitchell, can answer any questions about our spring sports.
Science Lab Photos: Want a peek at the exciting learning experiences our young men had at Saturday's science lab?
Here is a folder of photos from the day and a brief video below. The science lab activities included looking at living and nonliving cell structures in a microscope; rates of diffusion and osmosis by cell size; biodiversity and how species interact with each other, such as how species help and hurt each other; how scientists measure different substances in a lab setting; and rate of osmosis through a semipermeable membrane.
New Day for Parent Prayer Meetings: For the spring semester, our parent prayer meetings will now be on FRIDAY mornings, 7:50-8:30. This time is devoted exclusively to praying for our students, our faculty, our school, and our IA families. Many thanks go to Natalie Taylor, who has organized our weekly prayer meetings since literally Day 1 of the founding of IA. Each week, Natalie and Paula Brewington send requests to 3 or 4 parents to ask for any specific prayers for their sons. If there is anything that we can pray about for your family, please contact Natalie or Paula. God is faithful to answer our prayers and we have seen many prayers answered for our students, faculty, and school. Please join us on any Friday morning that you are available. The prayer meeting is held in the first room on the right side of the hallway as you turn left from the lobby.
Christmas luncheon and teacher gifts: Thank you to Nancy Hector and Kristin Ferguson for organizing the luncheon and gifts to the teachers and to all who brought in the delicious food. We gathered over $1400 to give Visa gift cards, Christmas cards, and poinsettias to all teachers and staff. Thank you for your generosity!
January Kids Exchange: We have an opportunity to earn several hundred dollars for IA by donating our used toys, kids clothing, and kids room furnishings to sell at the January Kids Exchange! "Kids" is defined as babies to teenagers. Click here for a list of the types of items that are sold at the Kids Exchange. You can receive a tax deduction for any items donated to IA and contact Anne York for the receipt. Deadline to donate items to IA is Friday, January 15. The items must be clean and in good working order. How to donate:
If you have a few small items to donate, then you can bring those any time before Jan 15 to drop off at school.
If you have a lot of items or large items, particularly a lot of clothes which must be on wire hangers, then contact Anne York at IPF@ironacademy.org to bring those items to store at her house (we don't have extra space at IA for storage.)
If you are planning to donate items, please let Anne York or Amy Clark know so that we can plan for how many volunteers we will need to tag and deliver our merchandise. Thanks for helping to turn your unused goods to funds for IA!
New features added to this website: To more easily locate the Blade Maintenance Plan document to submit each quarter, see the tab above to download the Blade Plan report. We have a Parent/Student Handbook that was emailed to everyone in September that is now also on this website to download. The handbook includes teacher contact information and policies about Round Tables, grading, tuition and fees, and student-teacher communication procedures.
Arts of the Swordsmen: An email message will be sent out soon for a planning meeting of parents and students for this year's Arts of the Swordsmen (AOTS) that will be held in May. Photos below are from last year's outstanding event!
Home addresses in RenWeb: Several families have incorrect or incomplete addresses in RenWeb. To update your new home address or change any of your contact information, log in to RenWeb on your computer and 1) click on the "School Information" tab from the menu choices on the left; 2) when this tab shows all of its menu choices, click on the last one "Web Forms"; 3) then click on the link in the middle of your screen "Family Demographic Form"; 4) you will then be able to click boxes that will open to forms to update the student and parent addresses and contact information. 5) Scroll down to hit the Save button within each section that you change. If you have moved since your son applied to IA, please be sure that our home address is updated.
IPF Fundraising Update: The fall semester is when we will do our main fundraising activities and thank you everyone for making it a successful semester! We do fundraise through various types of activities to diversify our revenue streams. Here is an update on how much we have raised so far through each of our fundraising programs:
Used uniform sale in August: We earned $822 from selling spiritwear and used uniforms that were donated. Please contact Anne York if you would like a tax receipt for your clothing donation. Warrior Challenge: Our proceeds after expenses are around $9800. Car magnets: We have sold about 10 of these this semester for a total of $50. Autobell: We still have a few car wash tickets available for sale and after we sell those, we will have earned around $1300 net proceeds. Christmas wreaths: We earned $600 net proceeds from selling wreaths in December. Red Rooster Coffee: We received a $120 donation from the Meredith family for our sales of Red Rooster Coffee. Friday lunches: We received a $120 donation from Tracy Bright for the 10% of Friday sales for the fall semester. Make War Spiritwear: We earned net proceeds of about $150 from the spiritwear sold for Christmas through Signupgenius. We also ordered more shirts to sell as shown below. Christmas Kids Exchange: We earned $230 at the Christmas Kids Exchange in November. We will also participate in the January sale - see details above.
From our retail fundraising programs: Harris Teeter: We have 21 VIC cards linked to us and have earned $48.50 so far this school year. We earn money on our purchases of Harris Teeter branded items. Kroger: We have 2 cards linked to us and from September to November, these 2 people earned us a donation of $39. Does anyone else shop at Kroger? Target Red Card (debit or credit): We have 2 persons who have linked their Target cards. Target donates 1% of the purchase price (as well as giving the customer a 5% discount from using their card). These 2 linked accounts have earned $6.57 since September. This will be the last year that Target does their school donation program. Does anyone else use their Target credit/debit card to link to us before this program expires in May? BoxTops: For the 2015 calendar year, we earned $74.60. Our next BoxTops submission date is the end of February. Shoparoo: This is a free phone app that allows us to raise money and be entered into $1000 monthly drawings just from scanning our store receipts from any store or restaurant. There are 7 people using this app, including a grandparent and aunts, who have earned $18 since September. We could rapidly increase how much we earn if there are more users of this app. We earn points toward money for every receipt from a store that sells groceries, including WalMart, Target, and drugstores. All other receipts enter us into the monthly drawings. And for receipts from retailers that already pay us money, like Harris-Teeter, we get a "double" payment by also using Shoparoo! Fundyourpta.org: When shopping at Amazon or Groupon, first go to the website fundyourpta.org/ironacademy.php and click on the Amazon or Groupon link to start your shopping excursion. From June 1 to Nov 30, we earned $82 from receiving 1% from Amazon purchases and 6% from Groupon purchases.
These activities led to a total of $13,460.67 raised! A good metric for comparison is that we have raised more than a year's tuition! We have paid for nearly $5000 of educational expenses and $2000 of extracurricular expenses so far.
If there are any of our retail fundraising programs that you or your relatives can help us with, then click on the tab above for Retail Fundraising to get information on how your shopping habits can support IA at no additional cost to you. These retail fundraisers have resulted in $269 so far with the only effort being to sign up for them.
Swordsmen - We Make War Spiritwear: We were able to order a limited number of additional shirts. Many thanks again to Beckie Kiker for the design. We have one long sleeve adult small t-shirt and the rest are short-sleeve t-shirts in sizes youth large and adult small, medium, large, and XL. We also have ladies fit V neck and scoop neck shirts. The youth shirts are $14 and adult shirts are $16. Contact Anne York if you would like to buy a shirt. The adult large shirts are black with a gray band on the collar and sleeves and all the other shirts are pure black. The front of the shirt says "Iron Academy Swordsmen" and the back says "Iron Academy Swordsmen - We Make War - Psalm 144:1" Psalm 144:1 (NIV) states "Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle."
Mid-year used uniform sale: We have some families interested in buying used polo shirts. If you have any that you want to sell or donate, please contact Anne York soon to make the connection between buyers and sellers.
UPCOMING EVENTS IN JANUARY: The school Events Calendar at the tab above and on Iron's website http://www.ironacademy.org/events-calendar/ has up to date information on school events. Of special note in January:
Sat 9th: Lab Day at Neuse Christian Academy: 6th and 7th graders 8:00 am to 12:30, 8th and 9th graders 1:30 to 4:00.
Mon 11th: Meeting of the Executive Committee of the IPF at 7:15. Please let Anne York, Jim Ferguson, Jenn Vinkler, Darrell Taylor, Heather Mauzy, or Amy Clark know if there are any topics that you would like the officers to discuss.
Tues 12th: Kamado Grille Spirit Night 5:30-8:30 - come to boost the sales that night - IA gets 10% of all sales!
Tues 12th: Family Information Session for prospective students 6:30-8:00.
