The Little Nutcracker ballet

On Friday, we went to see the Irish National Youth Ballet perform 'The Little Nutcracker'. There were two girls from our school dancing in the ballet, the skill of all the dancers in the ballet was amazing. They all moved so gracefully around the stage and performed all their dance moves so precisely!
 In the video above, the Irish National Youth Ballet are performing their opening number to the show. -Abbie :)

Junk Kouture Fashion Show!

Today at school we had our fashion show for junk kouture. This was a final showpiece of our creations, everyones outfits looked fantastic with their make-up and hair done! All of the outfits were so creative and they all looked amazing! So much effort went into making these outfits, we were all so proud when they were finally finished!

Muireann modeling our outfit!

The picture above is of our outfit, since my last Junk Kouture post, we have made a headpiece and decorated shoes to be worn with our outfit. We made the headpiece by attached a pom-pom made from tape to an old hairband. The shoes were decorated by wrapping tape around them and attaching them to the front of the shoes. I'm really happy with how our outfit turned out, we all aggreed we had worked as hard as we could to make it the best we could!
The fashion show was really great, it was so much fun! I loved looking at what outfits everyone else had created and what ideas they came up with!

-Blog soon, Abbie

Gaisce

Two weeks, ago I submitted my entry for gaisce. Gaisce is the 'president's award', students who nominate themselves for the awards set goals for themselves under the following headings: Community invlovement, Personal skills, Physical recreation and Adventure journey.

A minimum of 1 hour a week is required in each of the first 3 challenge areas. At the end of the programme, nominees undertake an adventure journey for one night and two days. We must also undertake one of the challenges for 26 weeks, twice the lenght of the other (13 weeks).

For my gaisce, I am doing camogie for the Physical recreation activity and I am doing this for 26 weeks. I am doing life saving for my personal skill and underage coaching for my community involvement.

I am really looking forward to completing my gaisce, bring on the challenge!

Life-saving

End of first work experience placement!

Today was the end of our first work experience placement! This placement was really great, I learnt so much! For my last day I went to an orthadontist in Naas, I leanrt all about braces here! I was also shown how to make mouthguards and retainers. I even made a mouthguard for myself to practice

The mouthguard I made is purple and white, as you can see from the photo. I can use it for any sports now!
In all, I learnt so much about dentistry, I now know what is involved in a career of dentistry and what type of work is done.

-Blog again soon, Abbie

Choir

Along with a few of my friends, I joined the school choir this year, we go to choir every Monday during lunch and after school for an hour every Tuesday.

On Monday we practice our christmas songs for the annual carol service. We sing classic christmas songs like Silent Night

On Tuesdays we practice our piece for the 'Wesley School Choir Competition'. The song we are singing for this compition is 'Caresse Sur L'Océan', this is a french song!

A school last year singing at Wesley

I'm really enjoying choir and I'm looking forward to our upcoming performances!

Mo thaithí oibre agus an Idirbhliain

This week in Irish, we were asked to make a blog entry describing our work experience (taithí oibre) placement we are in a the moment.
Here is my entry:
Roghnaíonn líon áirithe daltaí in Eireann tabhairt faoin mbliain bhruise sin ar go leor áiseanna éagsúla.
Creideann roinnt daltaí gur deo í an bhliain sa éalú ó chóras na scrúdaithe agus úsaid a bhaint as tallan atá acu a churtear faoi chois go minic toisc brú ó scrúdaithe stáit.
Toisc gom mbíonn béim mhór ar tionsenaimh san idirbhliain forbaítear scileann fíorthábhactaca iad sin sa lá atá innui ann.
Bíonn deis as daltaí freisin taithí oibre a dhéanamh agus is mór an buntaiste seo do chuid mhaith scoláirí.
Táim ag obair í Lialann fiaclóra í Rathcoole, Gco.Baile Átha Cliath.

Ba mhaith liom a bheith i mo fhiaclóir sa todhchaí. Is maith liom mo taithe oibre, bíonn tascanna le déanamh agam san oifig chomh bheith ag obair mar chúntár fiaclóireachta. Tá mé ag foglaim scileanna nua. Tá a fhios agam conas na ríomhairí a úsáid, a labhairt leis na custaiméirí agus conas a coinní a thógáil! Is aoibhinn liom an obair, tá súil agam go n-éireoidh mé go maith sa post seo sa tochchaí.

-Slán, Abbie

Mini-Company in Newbridge

For our second TY mini-company talk, we all headed off to Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge to learn even more about mini-companies from Orla, a representitive from the 'Kildare County Enterprise Board'.

We left our school early at around 9:30 and arrived in Newbridge shortly after 10:00!
Orla started the talk with each mini-company giving a brief introduction to their idea by the marketing managers within the group. We listened to each other's ideas, afterwards Orla told us more about the report that has to be completed to enter the Mini-Company competition in Kildare.

After we had learned all about the report we must make, we watched a few short films regarding different personality types. We learned how to identify each differnt personality type, they are known as; Passive, Aggressive, Passive Aggressive and Assertive. Passive personalities are more timid whereas Aggressive personalities tend to use shouting and e anger to express themselves. An assertive communicator has both the right levels of passiveness and aggressiveness within them. They tend to keep calm in tricky situations and gt across their message positively

Our mini-company talk then ended on this note, we then all headed up to the Food Court in Whitewater to have our lunch and chat about our mini-companies!

Bye for now, Abbie!

November News

The month of November really flew by! All of us TY's had a lot of deadlines to comply with during November!

Geography Trip Around The World

We were assigned a geography project a little over a month ago, this project involved us planning a trip around the world for two people for a full year. We were put into pairs and each given a budget of €12,000 each to spend (A total of €24,00 between us). We had to visit six countries in total; 2 developed countries, 2 developing countries and 2 underdeveloped countries, and write about what we learned on our 'trip'. I was paired with Liz and we decided to visit Iceland, Poland, St.Lucia, Peru, Kenya and India.

English Mood Board 

We each made a mood board for our English class. On this 'Mood Board' we stuck on pictures or sayings that inspire us. We also stuck on things that explain who we are as a person and our different interests.

As you can see from my mood board above, I have pictures of One Direction, Taylor Swift, swimming, camogie and other things too!

Mini-Company 

Our mini-company idea has really come on a lot during November, we are planning to start taking orders for our product tomorrow. I really hope people will be interested in our product! We have everything orgainsed to start making our DIY Dye kits, we just need to figure out the packaging really!

We also had a mini-company meeting with Orla in Newbridge, we were told more about how to manage our company and learnt about different personality types. The meeting was in the Odeon cinema and afterwards we were aloud to have our lunch in the food court! 

-Blog again soon, Abbie

Learning how to embed a video to my blog!

 During I.T class this week Mrs.L showed us how to embed a video from YouTube to our blog. It's so easy to do, hopefully now I will be able to post more videos to my blog!
How to embed:
1) Find video on YouTube
2) Click 'share' underneath the video and click embed.
3) Copy the embed code
4) Open a New Post in your blog and click 'HTML' in the left hand top corner and paste the embeding code there.
5) Click publish!

If you have followed the steps above you have now successfully embeded a video to your blog!

-Abbie :)

Smile

As you know for Work Experience, I'm working at a Dental Surgery. I'm really enjoying my time here, the staff are really friendly and so helpful!

This week was really busy at the surgery, it was probably my best week so far! I was aloud to take all phone calls and make/change appointments for people on the Apple computer 'Surgery' system. I was taking calls throughout the day! 

I was also doing other tasks including getting files of the patients from the cabinet, making 'take home packs' for the patients after they have had teeth extracted and also making up the protective glasses for the patients! 

For more info on the tasks I have done take a look at my Work Exeperience blog linked along the side of the page!

Blog soon, Abbie :)

The Simon Community

During school on Firday, there was a talk organised by students in our year to be given on The Simon Community. This presentation was given by Ms.O'S, my art teacher, she explained to us the work The Simon Community does in Cork and how they incorporate people living in the Simon Houses to the local community.

Ms.O'S had previously worked with the Cork Simon Community and was involved with one project in particular; the big 'Four-o' project. This project involved making and art banner containing the work of residents of the Simon houses, each resident was given a blank canvas and created, along with the help of artists like Ms.O'S, a masterpiece. Each piece of art was copied and printed onto a large banner which was hung in Cork city. The art work created was beautiful and expressed so many emotions. I thought that this was really a great project and I found Ms.O'S's stories of how each piece was created to be really inspiring.

An example of some of the Big Four-O artwork.

Young Scientist

Last month we were told about Young Scientist, the annual science competition in the RDS for students. Sarah B, Eve L and myself decided we would put an entry in! We thought long and hard about our project idea to enter. We eventually decided on the title Is a good night's sleep really that important?, we planned to research how sleep deprivation affects students mentally and physically.

We worked hard on our proposal and sent it off to the Young Scientist for approval. Our project wasn't chosen out of the entries to display at the RDS but on the bright side we were given 3 family tickets, one for each of us! We were dissapointed we didn't qualify but we are looking forward to going to the exhibition to look at all the other great projects there!

Junior Camogie

On Tuesday, I went to a camogie match near Santry! We were playing St.Dominic's school, this was the first time I played a Junior Camogie match this year. The bus journey took around a half an hour, when we arrived at the pitch we started warming up and got ready to play our match, I played as a forward! We unfortunately lost the match but it was a close game! The team had a good time out though, we all had a laugh on the bus! Hopefully we might be more lucky next time!

October's over, Now here's November

October was probably the busiest month we have had of TY so far! For October, We have been working on all our class projects.

Mini Company:

The mini-company group that I am part of has finalised all our ideas for our company! We have created a company called DIY Dye, we are going to be selling kits to make it easy for people to dye their own shorts (or other clothes too) and stud them also! I think our kits will be useful to people as it's a cheap way to make cool designs with your old shorts and give your old clothes a new look!

Our company logo!

Technology F1 car competition:

This month our year started in on another project in our tech class! As part of the project we have to design  a race-car and enter it into the 'Formula1 schools competition'. If our idea is chosen out of the many that enter, our design will be manufactured into a mini-race car! Our team name is Titanium, we thought of this name as titanium is a really strong and durable metal, like our car would be! Our inspiration for the design comes from a cheetah, the world's fastest land animal!

Trip Around The World:

We started our 'trip around the world' geography project during October! We work in pairs for this project. We are set a budget of €24,000 and we have to plan an ideal trip around the world for two people. We must visit 2 developing countries, 2 underdeveloped countries and 2 developed countries! We will learn about the country's cultures and traditions as we 'travel' aorund the world on this trip!

Check back for more updates on my TY experience soon! 

Junk Kouture!

We have been working away with our Junk Kouture project, there's so much work to do with it! We are making our outfit from casette tapes, we are using both the plastic cases and the tapes from inside! Muireann and Sarah are working on making this outfit too!

What our outfit is made from!

There's so much work involved with Junk Kouture but we're really happy with how the outfit is coming along, we're making a corset and skirt out of the tapes! We also have a belt made out of the tape covers, the hardest thing to make is the skirt as we have to sew on the tape by hand and it takes forever! Muireann did the sewing all last week while Sarah and I worked on the corset, so I think we better give Muireann a break from it this week, it's very easy to get sick of sewing all those tapes!

Our outfit so far (still unfinshed) , and yes that is Muireann under it...





This is the belt we made from the tape covers!



That's all for now, blog soon!

Hollywood, here we come!

Last week at school, my friend Muireann and I filmed the first episode of Wolstan's 'TY News'. We made a video telling everyone what us Transition Years have been up to so far in school! After we had both calmed down and controlled our fits of laughter, we talked about Junk Kouture, Carlingford, Work Experience and Workshops we have done!
If you want to have a look at the video it's linked underneath here! We tried our best, but believe me it was hard for us not to laugh at each other trying to be serious!

Yellow bees!

For the past week or so our class had all been getting ready for the Fun Walk which took place last Friday! Our year colour was Yellow,, so we all decided we would dress up as bees! We made up a dance that represented friendship (the theme) and inclusion! Half of us were 'bad bees' then the other half were 'good bees', at the beginnig of the dance the bad bees bullied the good bees (while the song 'I'ma be' was playing) but afterwards we all learned to get along and we danced together to 'Here comes the sun'! Our class tutor was great, she helped us with the dance so much and even dressed up as a sun on the day itself! On Monday, we all found out we had actually won a prize for best class in our year!

Everybody 'Buzzing' during our dance routine!

Work Experience

We began work experience last week, for this first placement I am working in a dentist. Everyone is so kind and helpful at my work experience place! I've had a really good experience so far and I hope this will stay the same for the rest of my placement, it's great getting to learn more about dentistry and what's involved in that career! I think I'd really like this type of work! I'm really excited for the rest of my placement and hope all goes well! :)


Blog soon!

Carlingford!- Day 2

After a day of great fun, we all got up with an early start around 7:00 a.m to start packing up all our things to go home, we then all made our way down to have breakfast and head out for another great day!
In the morning, we all treked up the hill (singing away)  to take part in the 'Carlingford challenge', we divided ourselves up into seperate teams and battled it out to try and gain more 'gems' than the other teams by completing the different challenges! Our team worked really well together and we came joined-first along with another team!
Afterwards, we headed off to 'laser combat', we were split up into teams and we worked together to try and beat the other team. We all got a bit mucky from lying on the forest floor taking cover from the other team's shots but i though it was so much fun and everyone had a great time!

Ready to take on the 'Laser Combat'!

Overall, I had a great time in Carlingford! I got to know many more people in my year a lot better and had great fun with all the girls in my year! Those 2 days at Carlingford were a great experience and I'm sure it will be one of the highlights of my TY year! :)

Carlingford! -Day 1

At the start of this week, our year group went to Carlingord Adventure Centre in Co.Louth. We left Celbridge early in the morning (around 7:00 a.m) loaded with all our sweets and our wellies, ready to get stuck in to all the activities at Carlingford!

When we arrived at Carlingford, after a bus journey full of song, we were greeted by the friendly staff there and got sorted into our rooms and activity groups! We then headed off to our first activity, kayaking. We paired off and set off into the water, headed for an underground waterfall across the Lough, there was a myth sorrounding this waterfall that if we kept our head submerged under it for 10 seconds we all would live a day longer!  Kayaking was great fun, we somehow managed to stay in the kayak and not capsise but we did get soaked, i must admit we surprised ourselves on how good we were at it, I thought we would be miles behind the others but it turned out we were quite the opposite!

For the second part of that first day we took part in the High-Ropes challenge and 'Zorbing'. We walked for 20 minutes down the road until we came to an open field, I the noticed all the wooden poles and ropes suspended high above the ground, I knew what we were going to be doing would be scary! We got suited up in all the safety gear and began our 'High-Ropes' activity. I was first out of our group to begin climbing up the 35 ft pole, but don't worry I was safely secured to a harness attached to my other team-mates on the ground! When I reached the top of this pole there was a small 'pizza-box' sized tile, which I had to stand on, I had to stand in a corner of the tile so that I could leave room for three other girls to stand on it also! Shauna was next to climb the pole to the top, I was shaking so much the pole was wobbling, once Shauna reached the top I began to calm down as I knew I wasn't alone up there! After Shauna, Sarah and Roisin climbed to the top! Once we were all up there, we had to make a 'star' shape by holding each other's hands and leaning back off the pole, we had to trust each other! It was so scary but we all gave it a shot anyway although I'm pretty sure the shape resembled nothing of a star !

Dangling 35ft up in the air!

When everyone was finished with the High-Ropes, we all headed over to do 'Zorbing'. I had no idea what zorbing was and had never heard of it before, but when we arrived i quickly caught on! There's a picture below of what we were doing! For the whole journey down the hill in the 'zorb', both Chanice and I were screaming and laughing at the tops of our voices! Zorbing was so much fun, everyone enjoyed it!

Zorbiiiiing!

Later on after dinner, we all put on our wellies and head up the nearby hills to a forest where we were doing a blind-folded late-night walk! In this activity, we all put blindfolds on and placed our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us. This was another trust exercise as we were all relying on other people to guide us safely around all the obstacles and trees in the forest.

After our walk we had all worked up an appetite and decided to head down to the Chineese take-away! The poor man working there had probably never seen so many people packed into that waiting room before! After a long wait, our take-away was finally ready and everyone headed back to the centre to eat and settle down for the night, we all went to our rooms around 11:00. We were all so tired after a busy day of activities but also ready for more the following day!

Results week!

This week, we got our Junior Certificate results! We were all so nervous the days before we got our results but also excited to be going out after our results to celebrate! We went in to the hall at 12:30 and we all waited with our old base classes to be handed our results! Everyone was so releived when they opened their envelopes, all the girls did so well! Once we got our results we were allowed leave, we all went out as a year group later to celebrate our results!

We were all so tired after our great night out, but we all managed to somehow make it out of bed and in to school on Thursday. Everybody had soon recovered by Friday however where we continued to work on our Junk Kouture projects and learnt more about our year trip to Carlingford on Monday! Our TY co-ordinator spoke to us about what we should bring on the trip and what activities we would be doing!
Every year, Carlingford is said to be one of the highlights of TY , i'm sure this will be the same for all of us too! Everyone, including myself, is so excited for it and it sounds like it will be great fun! Woooh! :)

First week in TY !

For our first week in TY we started to get to know everyone in our class better and began to bond as a class, we also had our first day of workshops! During the day, we had three different workshops, i thought they were all really good! The first was a workshop about self-confidence and self-esteem! Secondly, we went to a workshop called 'positive party', this was all about thinking positively and turning negative feelings into positive ones. I thought this was really fun and everyone got really involved in all the activities which was great! Our last workshop was about etiquette and how we present ourselves at interviews etc. We learned many different things including table manners, how to walk properly and a brief lesson on how to apply make-up correctly and what make-up we should be using!

This week we also started designing our Junk Kouture outfits which was fun! We decided on what materials we would use and how we wanted to put all the materials together to create our dress!

I thought our first week in TY was really great, we started off projects in different classes, learned about our classmates and overall got to know each other much better! I can already tell this year is going to be so fun! I'll post as often as I can on this to keep people updated on what we're doing in TY! :)