Concert Choir is designed to help grade 9 students understand the vocal gifts that God has given them, to encourage them to use their vocal gifts to God’s glory, and to become independent singers.  Concert choir members sing sacred and secular choral pieces for all major concerts, the WSMA Concert Festival, and sacred music for chapel on occasion.  This choir also prepares students for the Traveling Choir.

Traveling Choir is designed to help students in grades 10-12 understand the vocal gifts that God has given them and to encourage them to use their vocal gifts to God’s glory while preparing them for collegiate level choral music.  The Traveling Choir performs as part of the curriculum for all major concerts at WLA, WSMA Concert Festival, WELS Choral Fest Sacred Concert, and WLA chapel. In addition, the Traveling Choir travels to the churches of the WLA Association on Sunday mornings throughout the school year to sing God’s praises in worship.  Students in the Traveling Choir must be WELS or in fellowship with the WELS to audition for the Traveling Choir.

The Academy Kids are the extracurricular acapella choir at WLA.  Mainly student-lead, the Academy Kids are the musical entertainment ambassadors of WLA to the surrounding community. They participate in many concerts at WLA, provide Christmas caroling for local business and church groups, perform in a Spring grade school tour, and represent WLA at the WELS Choral Fest Pops Concert each November.

Viking Band is the instrumental music ensemble of WLA. The band performs multiple free concerts throughout the year and serves as the Pep Band for WLA and Association events. Students with instrumental music experience are encouraged to join the band with approval from the band director.

Our program also offers instrumental music education to the families and students of Winnebago Lutheran Academy and its Association WLA Schools. We focus on band instrument instruction for students in grades 5-12.  Visit our WLA Bands website.

The WLA Theater Program is an after-school extracurricular activity that involves students from all walks of life on our campus. Every year, this group performs two live theater productions, including a fall musical and spring drama. All students are welcome and encouraged to audition.

Coming in the Fall of 2023: Anastasia!

WLA will be presenting the musical Anastasia this fall on November 9-12.  Auditions will be held the week of August 7-11 for new or returning students in grades 9-12 that wish to audition.  If you are interested, please review the audition information on our theater website at https://theatre.wlavikings.org/home.  Contact our director, Andrew Mildebrandt, at amildebrandt@wlavikings.org if you have any questions.

The WLA Fine Arts Department offers five unique art electives for students in grades 9-12.

• Art 1–The Introduction to Art course consists of an overview of learning to appreciate God’s gift of the visual arts through studio art projects, art history, critiquing artworks and learning what is aesthetically pleasing. (This course must be taken before any other Art elective.)
• Ceramics–In the Ceramics course students explore the three basic handbuilding techniques of pinch, coil, slab, as well as an introduction to using a pottery wheel. Production pieces using these techniques are perfected as well as ceramic terminology, kiln firing, and a capstone project on a famous contemporary/ historical ceramist.
• Drawing–The Drawing course extends the knowledge of the students in the various drawing media as was begun in the Introduction to Art course. Some of the media may include, but are not limited to pencil, charcoal, conte’ crayons, colored pencil, pastels, as well as creating pieces using mixed media.
• Painting–Painting is an elective course where the students will use their previous painting knowledge from Introduction to Art to work more in depth with the painting medium. Some of the media may include, but will not be limited to, watercolors, acrylics, printmaking and other experimental and mixed media.
• Printmaking–This beginning printmaking course in the expression of two dimensional ideas, processes, materials, and terminology used in printmaking is taught using the studio processes such as relief, collographs, monoprints, linocuts, stencils and reduction prints. Through the use of these studio projects this course is designed to develop higher level thinking, problem solving, foster creativity and confidence in artistic exploration.