St.Brigid, our patron saint of Kildare

Yesterday our TY year group went on a mini-pilgrimage to Kildare town. First we sopped off at the very centre of Kildare town, at the heritage centre. Here we learnt all about the history of Kildare and St.Brigid.
We watched a really interesting video about St.brigid and Monastic life in Kildare!

After this we ventured across Kildare town to the old cathedral! We all took a quick look around the cathedral and afterwards Mr.K said a few prayers with us.

The cathedral in Kildare town
We then hopped back on the bus to head over to go on our short walk. We visited St.Brigid's well at the National Stud and we visited St.Brigid's holy shrine.

St.Brigid's well

After our trip we all went bowling!

Caresse Sur L'ocean

Our choir is currently preparing to enter into the Wesley School's Choir Competition at the end of this month! We have been very busy practicing our song 'Caresse Sur L'ocean' from the french movie 'Les Choristes'. I really enjoy singing this song, I think it sounds really well with the piano accompaniment. I sing the Soprano II line along with all the other sopranos!

Above is a clip of the choir from the Les Choristes movie singing the piece!

I am really enjoying being part of the choir this year, and I am looking forward to performing this piece at Wesley!

Blog soon-Abbie

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 :)

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!

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! :)

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! :)