Moulin Roouuuuge!!!

Yesterday was our home ec fashion show. as part of Ty home ec, each group are given a plain white t-shirt and white jeans and told to make an outfit from it! So today, after long home ec classes and lots of meetings to try finish our outfit, Today our model, Anita, walked down the runway in our school hall. our theme was Moulin Rouge, and Anita walked down to Christina Agulera's song Lady Marmalade! Outfit consisted of a pink corset, a black bow around her waist, a long black skirt which was floor length, with a mini pink skirt underneath. Thinking Back on our progress, we have come a long way, from changing our ideas many,many times, and from being told our outfit was rubbish, to seeing our outfit complete! we were all so happy that it turned out so well! and we were told this morning that we had come first in our class!! We were all so happy that our hard work had paid off!!

holidays are coming, the holidays ARE coming!!

Its the middle of December, and that can only mean one thing, Christmas is coming! this year i have been a little like The Grinch, and refused to say the C word  until only a few days ago, and now that it is the middle of December, I can talk about Christmas!! the Ty's have been getting into the Christmas spirit, by sending christmas videos to schools all over the world, from here in ireland, all the way to Ausrailia!! We have been having classes to sing carols, and yesterday, for Tutor time, i can safely say that one christmas song was our favourite. Of course its an irish classic, The Pogues, Fairtale of New York! This song has so many memories from school and Christmas over the years, and it is clear that this is Irelands favourite Christmas song!

Here it is! have a listen!

'My Sister's Keeper' Book Review

The novel I have studied is ‘My Sisters Keeper’ by Jodi Piccoult. This novel is based in the United States and is based around a teenage girl, Kate who has had Leukaemia from a young age.        
   In this novel, we come across many characters, the main ones being Kate and her family. The story is told from the point of view of Anna, Kate’s thirteen year old sister, who was brought into the world to help her sister to survive. Anna is my favourite character in this novel. Throughout the novel we read of the family’s troubles, up’s and down’s, and mostly, how Anna feels about the whole situation.         
         There are many themes in this novel such as love, family, sadness, sickness and hope, but the theme that interested me was the theme of conflict. Conflict develops at the start of the novel and continues throughout. The strongest element of conflict in this novel is when Anna goes to see a lawyer behind her family’s back, and asks for the right to her own body.       
           At this point she is fed up of always being used to help her sister survive. We read of how every time her sister Kate goes into hospital, she somehow always ends up there too. Shortly afterwards, her parents find out about the lawyer she hired and Anna and her parents have a row in the kitchen.   
           I liked this novel as I could relate to the setting, the home life and everyday lives were similar to mine. The family live in a standard house, in a normal house, in a basic neighbourhood. The children went to school and the family did things together at the weekend. They struggled with money sometimes, but managed to keep their heads above water. The culture in this novel is similar to my culture and therefore I could relate to it.      
          I liked the writer’s style in this novel. We see the point of view from a young teenager and we see how life is in her mind. At different stages in the book, we are told the novel from different points of view, for example when Anna goes into the lawyer, we read a chapter from his point of view and we see how he saw Anna and what he thought of her case. In one part of the novel the point of view switches from Anna to her father. We read of how he feels towards Kate’s illness.
            The writer uses a lot of dialogue in this novel, and a lot of conversations take place. She also writes paragraphs to describe how Anna is feeling and what exactly she is thinking. 
           Overall, I think the writer has a mixture of both optimistic and pessimistic outlook on the novel. The main vibe throughout the novel is negative, with Kate’s illness being the main plot to of the novel, but she also writes of the positive elements such as the happy moments the family has together. However, the ending is dramatic, but it also describes to the reader how the family feel and how they move on with their lives.            I really enjoyed the novel and I think it would be a good novel to read with our class and to study

And the Nominees Are...

I would like to nominate Caitriona Eves as best Student Blogger for her amazing TY blog. for those who haven't read it, all I'll say is that every blog is a poem that rhymes. here's the link to check it out for yourself!


http://tienies.blogspot.com/

Almost time !!

Next Monday is the 14th of November which  only means one thing. Work Experience!! its all everyone is talking about lately and everyone is so excited for it!! everyone is going to different places and the excitement and nerves is starting to kick in!! I'm going to the primary school in straffan for mine :) I'm really looking forward to it and cannot wait to hear how everyone else got on too ..

English trip to Dublin! :-)

Yesterday all the T.Y's went to Dublin for the day as part of their English TY course. We all Came into school excited and ready for the day ahead of us. We got the bus at 9am and got to the city centre at about a quarter to 10. First up for class Eriú was the W.B Yeats exhibition on Kildare Street. We got to see lots of documents that Yeats wrote himself and we found out lots about him. After that we went to the National Library. We were all expecting lots of books, but when we got there, there was no books? Just lots of documents from years and years ago. Next up was what we had all been waiting for.. the Bog Bodies Exhibition! We were all excited and nervous to see them, but i have to say, they weren't as bad as i expected! Overall they were interesting and i found out lots about what happen to us after we die! then we went for lunch on Grafton Street before meeting up again for a quick walk to the Abby Theatre for the play 'Juno & the Paycock'. they play was good and we all understood it alot more than we did while reading it! We all loved the actor that played Johnny for some reason! overall it was a great day had by everyone!

Time Travelling!

As part of our T.Y history course, we have been talking about our family trees. I love finding out about my ancestors and i have found the whole process very interesting. i found out that my family is quite alot bigger than i thought! we have been looking up many websites that trace families back to 1902!
now in history we have moved on to Women in History. we had to pick one women and find information about her. I didn't know who to do at first, but as i researched the topic, i found lots of people to do. I changed my mind lots of times, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt, to St.Brigit. to finally deciding on Princess Diana. These women are all very different and range from different times in history but are all very interesting!
I can't wait to time travel a little more!

this week we have been doing lots!
1- Fun Walk: so many off our classes have been practising our routine to the funwalk
2- Projects: our home ec project on 1900's fashion was due this week
3- Mini-company- we have been working on our idea lots this week and things are finally starting to come together
4- Reading: we're going to see juno and the payacock in 2 weeks time so we are trying to finish reading the play before then... we are also reading our own books in creative writing...
5- Activities : today is thursday so after luch we have pilates, dancing and then photography
:)

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

tomoro is our anual funwalk and we have been given the colour YELLOW! because we're ty's, we have been practising our fun walk lots and lots and we are becoming quite competitive! our theme is bananas and as its friendship week we are trying to base our dance around friends.... we have deceided to have martha and caitriona as bananas in pyjamas as they are best friends and the rest of us have a routine to the banana song, with a bit of gwen stafani's b-a-n-a-n-a-s at  the end... we are all really excited about our dancing and we're praying that the weather will be kind to us all!

what a girl wants, what a girl needs!

Last thursday we went to Naas for a mini company workshop... it was great and we got alot done on our product.. we're calling it "What a girl wants! what a girl needs!" its a small compact bag that has everthing a needs to keep in her handbag, from tissues to eyelash glue! we're going to make a night out product first, with everything you need for a night out... and hopefully if thats sucessful we'll move on to debs ones too! the workshop was really helpful and we now know what we need to do for our mini company to be sucessfull! everyone in our group is working really hard to make it work out well and we're all super excited :)
we have been getting lots of projects in other subjects and they are keeping is really busy! theres no time for many breaks anymore cos the work has began!

Who would have thought there would be days like this!

ty has been such a blast since we started, with thursday being my favourite day of course.. but tuesdays arnt bad either! this morning instead of double art we had our opening school mass... its very rare that we get to gather as a whole school all at once but this morning we did and it was a great start to the year... the local priest came and the whole school gathered and  i must say it went really well..
as part of enlish, we were given a list if books to choose from and we had to read one in our spare time.. i dont usually enjoy reading but when i saw 'my sisters keeper' on the list i said i would give it a go... im only a few pages in and im enjoying it, but i can feel that death is going to come at some stage and im not sure if thats the right thing i should be reading about after loosing someone that was so close to me during the summer but i ll keep reading and see how it goes..
this thursday is going to be even better! we are going on an outting to naas on a mini company workshop on thursday and i have to say, i cannot wait! i love mini company and am getting really excited about our product so watch this space!

thank god its thursday!

since i started ty, thursday has been my new friday! its the day that gets me through the week! once lunchtime comes on a thursday its no more classes, its activity time... i missed thursday last week because i was away but iam extra excited for today.. first pilates which is my new favourite hobby... it relaxes you lots and at the same time you have great craic with the girls and its great excercise too! after that its onto dacing and photography :)
we got our junior cert results last wednesday which means the jc is officially over! everyone was in very high spirits last wednesday morning, despite all being exhausted from our carlingford trip.. we had to get through 6 long classes before we were finally called down to the hall... everyone was buzzing and finally the envelopes were handed out!  everyone was really happy with their results and everyones hard work really paid off! we finished the nite in time in naas which was an amazing nite for all (:

Carlingford :D

Where do i start! our bonding trip started in what felt like the middle of the nite last monday morning at 6am... all the TY's met at the garage near our school at 7 to head off on our trip... everyone arrived with their bags and bags of gear, and still half asleep. for the two day trip.... despite the tiredmess, everyone was in great form and excited for the two days to come.. we headed off and arrived in carlingford for 9am... before we knew it we were on a treck to the challenge course for some team work.. here we did lots of tasks to build our teamwork skills in groups... after a few hours here we headed back for lunch before my favourite part of the trip, the laser tag.... we all dressed in army suites and headed up a massive hill (worst part of trip) before FINALLY reaching the forest where the laser course... we were split into two teams and had to fight against eachother... the course had hideouts everywhere and everyone took the game very seriously and did their very best to win!
that night after dinner, when it was starting to get dark we were brought back up the mountain into the forest where we were blindfolded and had to hold on to the persons shoulder infront of us to find our way out.. we all had such a laugh but were very glad to get home in one piece!we then all sat around the fire with another school we met and sang some songs and chatted to eachother before being told to go to bed by a rap from ms leahy.... the next morning we woke early and geaded off for more activites... it started with  orientering which was my least favourite part of the trip because we ended up getting lost at the top of a mountain.... after lunch we did rock climbing which was great fun... before we knew it, it was time to go home... we were all exhausted from our hectic two days and we were all glad to see our beds that nite!

overall it was a brilliant two days away and a great start to TY!

Back to School!

it was my first week back at school this week and so far T.Y's been great! on our first day back we talked alot about the B.T young scientist competition that we are entering soon! the first few days seemed to fly and before we knew it, it was thursday.... on thursday afternoon instead of classes we had activities.... it started with pilates which was the highlight of my day! we all had such a laugh before moving on to jazz dancing... we learned the charleston and learned lots about 1920's dancing... then lastly was photography to finish off the day nicely!
next monday all the ty's  are heading to carlingford for two days to an adventure centre and we cant wait! roll on the rest ty!