On the weekend of October 17-19, students in Grades 7 and 8 accompanied Pastor Ball as they made their annual pilgrimage to Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN. Besides taking in some of the local color, they attended workshop sessions featuring Rev. Todd Wilken, the regular host of the nationally syndicated radio program, Issues, Etc. Some of our chapel offerings this year were sent to support this work.

A recent article in the Sentinel (Aurora, CO) reports that, "The ancient language [Latin] isn’t spoken much anywhere in the world these days and seldom used by the Roman Catholic Church anymore. But in schools across the country, the language is catching on with a new generation of students drawn to the language that experts say is the basis for the Romance languages and is still the language of science and the law."

"Latin makes a comeback when people say, ‘We need to get back to strong educational basics, strong fundamentals,’ said Rebecca Jessup, a Latin teacher at Cherokee Trail High School in southeast Aurora, one of three high schools in Aurora that offer the ancient language."

The 135,000 students who took the National Latin Exam this year was up dramatically from 1977, when the exam started with 6,000 students. The number has steadily risen in recent years, according to the New York Times, with 101,000 taking the exam in 1998 and 124,000 in 2003.

The 7th and 8th Grade students will be among the number that take the 2009 National Latin Exam.

On Tuesday at the end of the school day, we saw a spider on its silk descending from a tree outside our classroom. Many of the children gathered around to see it after dismissal.

Here is a picture of that spider taken with one of our school's digital microscope cameras. After conducting a little internet research, it appears that it might be a Garden Orb Weaver (family Araneidae) -- but if anyone can give a more accurate description, please e-mail us. Check the information at the Book Rags website.There are over 30,000 varieties of spiders in the world -- and it isn't always easy to tell them apart.

The kindergarten students just did a unit on spiders.  If you'd like to check out some other spider pictures, check out Awesome Spiders and Cirrus Image web sites -- or surf the internet to find something better.