BT Young Scientist

We recently visited the BT Young Scientist exhibition in the RDS with our year group. Everyone had a great time, we enjoyed walking around looking at all the projects and of course, collecting some freebies along the way! There was a group from our TY year that got through to the competition, their project was good. It was about how school bags affect your health etc. In all, we had a great day at the Young Scientist!

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 :)

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!

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!

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!