Pilgrimage & Bowling

Hey guys,

This week we went on a mini pilgrimage, ate out, and went bowling. Not to mention we also performed in our school's annual Music Night.

The week started off on Tuesday after our long weekend and St.Patrick's day!! On Tuesday we started watching the movie '21' in maths. It's all about this guy that needs to save $300,000 for his college tuition fee's and so gets roped into a group of 'card counters' that use their 'super brains' to cheat casino's in Vegas and win themselves a lot of money. We haven't quite finished it yet, but if you haven't seen it I definitely recommend giving it a watch, it's so interesting!

Usually on a Wednesday we would go to work experience but since our second block is completed we have been going out on mini group trips. This week's came in the form of a mini pilgrimage to Kildare.

Our pilgrimage involved us visiting sights such as those shown above. They are all to do with St. Brigid and the last picture you see (St. Brigid's holy well) shows a tree on the left hand corner full of small belongings traditionally put there by visitors symbolising people they would like to be prayed for. Our pilgrimage was followed by a trip to White Water Shopping Centre (where we filled up on doughnuts & carrot cake) and then a competitive game of bowling! It was a great day!

On Thursday and headed straight to the hall to practise for that nights music night. We were singing a medley of 'Ho Hey' by the Lumineers, 'Hall of Fame' by The Script and 'I follow rivers' by Lykke Li. We had been practising the previous few weeks and set the stage that night in front of an audience made up of student's parents. It was a great night and nobody forgot their words!

Today we finally finished contagion (another BRILLIANT movie that you should watch) and continued to make our Teddy Bears, they're really coming together! Now for our two-week long mid-term break, Have a good Easter :)

Till next week,
Ciara

Retreat time

Hey guys,

So another week has passed in Transition Year and i'm here again writing about this week's antics. Transition year seems to be FLYING by, We can basically call ourselves fifth years, can you believe there's only a little over 2 months until summer?!

So this week was full of project work, but we took a lovely day off from all our hard work and went up to Tallaght for our TY retreat. Here we sectioned off into small groups of 12 students or so and made our way to our own rooms. Here, we spoke about life and experiences, and it was a spectacular day.

The week had a great finish and ended with us all dressed up as leprechauns and fairies. Our school prefects set up a dress up day to the fast arriving St.Patricks festival. Each year had a theme to inspire their dress-up and everybody brought in 2 euros to go towards charity. It was a great day, full of movie watching, celebrating and dancing!

Till next week,
Ciara

Trip to Trinity

Hey guys,

This week was fun, again busy & all the while recieving new projects. The end of the week was finished off with a small trip to Trinity College, Dublin, where we were spoken to by different physicists, scientists & engineers about their world of work and expertise.

 





 

It was a great day and I certainly feel more informed about the engineering side of things and I feel as though I've made the right subject choices for next year. An added plus was that we ended the trip with a lovely warm cup of tea, a sandwhich, popcorn & more, all complimentary of course!

Till next week,
Ciara

To Cork We go..

Hey guys,

This week was a pretty hectic week (in particular, a hectic friday!). We presented our Scifest projects to judges and made our way to Cork & back .. all in one day.

Other than Friday, this week was a relaxed one. We had a couple of assignment deadlines, but nothing major that we couldn't handle. What was crazy though was the numerous different activities that Friday had to offer.

Friday morning we set up our displays for Scifest. Myself and my partner Eimear had conducted an experiment regarding the topic of ithcing being contagious (it is). The morning was good fun and we wrapped up an left for Cork (a county on the other side of Ireland if you didn't know) at around 11:40am.

We took 3hours 25minutes in the mini bus until finally arriving at Briary Gap to perform our play. It was scary at first but when we got to it it was such good fun and we hope to have done our play justice. After perfoming we got back into the bus to return home nackered at 8:40pm. Talk about one crazy day.

Till next week,
Ciara



Professional Bongo Players



Hey guys,

So this week included two major events. Firstly, we had a 'percussion class' and secondly we went into Dublin to collect money for Lollipop day.

Lollipop day takes place every year, and Transition year students from all over the country participate in collecting money for charity. It's a fun day out and a great way to raise money for Oesophageal Cancer Research Ireland. We held collection buckets and gathered as much money as we could, and we also got to make our own way to any lunch destination of our choice (ours MacDonalds, no surprise there!). It was a great day and although we were f-f-freeeezing and at times felt like our toes were ready to fall off, we really feel like we have made a great contribution to the cause. Thank you to everyone who donated!

Earlier in the week we got together in our class groups to de-stress with ssome mad bongo playing. We learnt classic African songs and had a blast learning how to bring everything together. We were told the different names for different sized and shaped 'bongos' although I can't remember them now.. oops. If you're interested in having a fun afternoon of mad bongo playing then you can click here to contact David from the JabaJaba Jimbe organisation.

Till Next Week,
Ciara



Happy Pancake Tuesday!

In a week's time

Hey guys,

So this week was a lot of fun, and comes before our week long mid term break. We made risotto, watched some movies (for educational purposes of course) and practised for our end of year MUSIC NIGHT!

This Tuesday consisted of a jam packed afternoon when me and my Home Ec partner got together and whipped up a tasty chicken risotto. It was the first time I had ever tasted risotto or even tried to make it. Before then I had always thought of it as such a hard dish to make... how wrong I was!

This week and last week (and for the foreseeable future) myself and my class have been slowly but surely making our way through two movies. The first of these two movies we watched in religion class. I'm sure you've heard of it, it's called 'The Pursuit Of Happiness'. The purpose of us watching this film is to teach us about poverty and the devastating effects it has on people's lives. On going with this theme my class have produced a play on homelessness. This is why we were in Mullingar last week for a drama competition, and I have news.... WE GOT THROUGH! So watch out for a future blog post on my trip to Cork for the finals!

The second of the movies we have been watching (this time in Geography class) is 'Contagion'. We have recently been learning about different diseases. Each of us had been assigned a different disease to research and make a leaflet about. Our leaflets consisted of vaccinations, causes and symptoms of different diseases. My disease was Tuberculosis. Not a very pleasant disease to withold!

Today in music class we continued practising for our Transition Year music night that will be held in May of this year. We are singing a mash-up medley of 'Hey Ho'- The Lumineers, 'Hall of fame'- The Script and of 'I follow rivers' - Lykke Li. It's great fun to perform and we're really looking forward to the night!
 
In other news, I have recently picked up a book from the school library. Our school library had been neglected for a long time and turned into an uncomfortable, cold class room. But, all of that changed this year and it has been completely transformed. We have gotten a librarian, new books (voted in by students) and there's talk of us getting bean bags, water fountains and computers! So, due to this drastic change there has been a lot of excitement produced about the library and I have been encouraged to read more books. So far I have read 'The Kite Runner' and am currently reading 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini. If you haven't already, RUN to your nearest book outlet and get yourself a copy of each, they are fantastic reads!

Till next week,
Ciara