Peter Mc Verry Trust :)

On Saturday the 25th of September , Myself and Some other transition years volunteered a couple of hours of their Saturday to participate in some volunteering for the Peter Mc Verry Trust. The Trust supports young homeless people to break the cycle of homelessness and move towards independent living through the provision of a continuum of care services. We spent 5 hours bagpacking in Celbridge. As I was the co- ordinator of the event the The Peter Mc Verry Trust later emailedme and sent a letter telling us that we had made €1375.50. We were proud of our work and will hopefully tke part in moe volunteer work to come :)

Hockey :)

Hockey this year has been completely different to other years. I find it more enjoyable as I am working harder when at training and at matches and my improved fitness has helped to make this possible. Although we have only won one match so far ( last week ) i still feel that our team spirit is still there. We have all made new friends with the new girls on our team and have bonded very well since the start of the year. We are improving our skills and technique every time we play including today where we unfortunately lost our match by 1 goal. Hopefully we will have more wins to come :)

Karen :) x

Open Day :)

On Saturday myself and a few of my classmates volunteered to help out for the school Open day :). We showed the incoming first years and their parents the computer room. We informed them about our transition year project with blogger and how IT is a very useful subject. We also told them about the schools policy on using inappropriate sites and how they are blocked. Edcl for fifth years was also mentioned. :) overall it felt good to help out and pass on our experience to incoming first years. At the end were were given sweets and food :)
Karen :) x

Halloween dress up day :)

This year the dress up day was probably the most fun since I have been in the school. Most people felt the same. Most people in the school made a huge effort and Ty's especially. We got loads of photos with our new class and year head in our costumes and scary outfits. It was a great day hope next year will b as good :).
Karen :) x

Work Experience :)

DAY FIVE ( FINAL DAY)
this day went the fastest out of them all. I served on the til in the morning and to my delight a new task arrived at mid-day. A huge order had arrived from Newbridge Silverware. First we had to organise all the same stock into piles together, then we checked the products of the invoice when we had them, then scanned them into the system on the computer, priced and put in the drawers. Our system was foolproof! However the large order still took a long time to finish so that kept me  busy until the end of the day. Overall i thoroughly enjoyed my work experience , Wish I could have seen more about medicine but i suppose advice I would give to other girls is unless you want mostly retail go to a Hospital:)
Karen :) x

Work Experience :)

DAY FOUR
Today my main priority as serving the public. Most of the other jobs had been done the days previous. I was mostly working between making Christmas gift sets and working on the til. I found working on the til very interesting as it was a new skill to hold and i love interacting with new people. In the evening as always I entered the new stock into the computer and priced the items. I used my initiative by fixing any products that needed to be fixed or arranged. I also arranged the medical products onto shelves in the back so they were easy to access by the pharmacist.
Unfortunately not seeing much of the medicine side of the pharmacy however at least the retail is some experience that may be handy in the future.
Karen :) x

Work Experience :)

DAY THREE
Today I was definitely ready for anything that was thrown at me. I learned to be more confident when dealing with the public and taking initiative and decided to put both of these important skills into action. I did this by Chit chatting with the customers , making sure the were being looked after and knew where the item they wanted was and treated them with manners while serving them on the til. When I had finished my jobs and there was nothing else to do i took my own initiative and took up a cloth and window cleaner and cleaned the mirrors and window displays where necessary. I also left whatever job I was doing to serve customers because i learnt that " the customer is always the most important person". I also participated in:

• Making Christmas gift sets
• Stock taking
• Pricing products
• Watching and participating in entering stock into the computer
• running Arin's that needed to be ran.

Progress is slowly but surely becoming obvious.
Karen :) x

Work Experience

DAY TWO
This day wasn't as stressful. I felt like apart of the staff and the unfamiliar feeling of independence began to kick in. Jobs were varied from the previous however some were very alike. On Tuesday I learned :

• How to use the till
• How to act wit customers ( always friendly, politely and helpful)
• Cleaned the Newbridge Silverware and organised the underneath compartments
• Stock taking

I felt some of the repetition in the tasks helpful as when the second time came around to doing the job i knew which method was the most effective.
Karen :) x

Work Experience :)

DAY ONE
 As expected day one was the most stressful day. I was very nervous before beginning and felt awkward to my new place of work as I was not only unsure of my surroundings but the people in it also. Soon enough i began to feel more settled and comfortable as I realised that all of the staff members were very helpful and informative. On the first day of my work experience in Conroy's pharmacy I was given different tasks to complete these included:

• Cleaning shelves
• Organising shelves with the products
• Organising stock in the underneath compartments
• Re - stocking counters where necessary
• pricing products with the pricing gun
• Stock control for Vichy
• Watched how my colleagues interacted with the customers

At the end of the day I was tired but reassured that the week ahead would be an enjoyable one.
Karen :) x

History Christmas Project :)

Today, Tuesday 3rd of November we were given our Christmas assignment for our History Project. The topic is local History and from this theme we have a choice of picking the local area that we live in or the locality where our ancestors or parents have come from. I am still undecided about which to choose but with more research the most interesting place will win me over. In the project we have five titles we have to Organise our information into.
1. Why you picked the area / the locality you did.
2.The historical significance of your chosen location.
3.What you found on a visit to a local library to find resources.
4. (optional) Family history / Family Tree
5. A reflection on the project and what you found most interesting about doing this.

I am excited about doing number 4 the Family Tree as hopefully I can find if i was related to some important historical figures! We have six weeks to complete this project so research is going to be starting soon.
Karen :) x

Young Scientist :)

Unfortunately we were posted out the letters by the organisers of BT young scientist and to our disappointment my group were not accepted to the competition this year. Even though we were not accepted to this competition we knew about Sci fest another Science exhibition which we had also planned to enter. In a way our refusal has inspired our group to work harder for Sci fest which takes place in April so we may have a chance at this competition!
Karen :) x

Work Experience :)

Work Experience begins next week for our first insight into the real working world. I have an interest in medicine and Science so I have considered this as a future career for myself. As a result of this i have chosen to go to a pharmacy. I am going to use public transport to reach my destination and get lunch in the area near me as I am trying to be as independent as possible.  However my idea of what working in this area will be like and what the actual reality of what it is could be two very different things! that is the idea of doing our work experience. This is one of the parts or Transition Year that i have been looking forward to the most. I think that this can only have a good outcome because if i like it i know that i would enjoy it as a future career however if i don't at least i can rule it out of what I want.
Karen :) x

Spanish Movie :)

Yesterday on Tuesday the 2nd Of November we finished watching our Spanish movie "El Bola" by Achero Manas. We had been watching  a segment of the movie one class per week until finished. Even though the movie was spoken in complete Spanish and I am not fluent I found watching the movie to be helpful in many ways. A tip that our Spanish teacher gave us to help us get an educational benefit from the movie was to read the subtitles (in English) first very fast and then listen to the characters speaking it in Spanish after. Soon enough we could associate the English words with the Spanish words. After using this method consistently it soon became obvious that it was effective. The movie also gave us an insight into Spanish culture Spanish music and how life is lived by young people our age in certain parts of Spain. Hopefully there will be more of these movies to come throughout the year!
Karen :) x

Dancing :)

Today , Wednesday the 3nd of November we started our dancing. This new and interesting activity replaces our usual P.E. activities which i think is a great idea! The activity has two main benefits, its enjoyable and more people find it interesting and as a result are more willing to be enthusiastic with this sport and most importantly it gives us a very effective exercise workout. Our dance teacher amazed us with her dance moves and impressively was able to teach us her well thought choreography. She kept us moving to an interesting beat of recent songs by artists we have an interest in such as Rihanna and Taio Cruz. Even though it has only been the first day of this class i love it already even though my legs have been left sore after the workout. I cannot wait until our next dance class which will be in two weeks time :)
Karen :) x

Colour me beautiful :)

On Friday the 15th of October two image consultants from "Colour me beautiful" came in to talk to us. The talk was about clothes, fashionand colour analysis. The women started off by telling our class that there are six different groups that peple are allocated to depending on their skin tone, Eye colour and hair colour. the groups are called: warm, soft, light, deep, cool and clear. I was told that I am a soft. This means that i have light brown hair and green eyes and my skin complection also matches. Other people who would be included in the soft group would be people with dirty blonde or mousy coloured hair with green , Blue or brown eyes but they must be dark colours. Your skin tone in this category would be slightly tanned to sallow. Colours that suit me are beige, brown, green, nude, coral (all of these colours must be worn in a soft shade, hence the name of the group.)

          During the talk we also participated in a style personality test. In this test you answer questions about the fasion stykles that appeal to your personality and whether you find your appearance to be important or you wouldn't put a lot of emphasis on it. My result was a romantic style personality. This means that i like lace, Frills, bows and girly styles. In this particular category we are said to enjoy getting ready and going out and take a long time to get ready. That definitely describes me so it looks like the women know what they are talking about! :)

Young scientist project :D

Myself, Alison and Jessica have entered ourselves into the BT young scientist competition this year. Our project is about the bacteria that lives on our money. We are trying to create awareness about the amount of bacteria that lurks on money and hopefully we can create a product that can reduce the amount of bacteria we have on our money. If we successfully make this product our aim would be to put it in cash registers and ATMs that could disinfect the money when needed. We have been in contact with a professor of microbiology in Trinity who has been voluntarily helping us with our project. We will find out in November if we have been accepted to the exhibition!

Mini company talk(:

On Monday a woman called Orlaigh from the Kildare Enterprise board came in to talk to our class and Emnet the other mini company class about our ideas for our mini companies. Myself and five other classmates are in a group together for this. Our product is a ring binder book which contains images, tips and instructions on how to achieve that natural and flawless daytime look.Our book will also include everyday hairstyles that are effortless and look great! we will also have a section in our book where you can follow the step by step guide to get the sheek and creative going out at night look. Throughout the book there will be skin care tips and health advice on how to keep your skin, hair and body at its best. Orlaigh suggested to us that even though the book is a good idea books are very common in the competition and because of this would not be given a very good chance in the competition. She advised my group to create a website instead, where we can publish all of the information and pictures that we were going to include in the book. As many girls in our school had really wanted the book we decided to do both. We are going to have the book with easy to find tabs and then a website also where the book can be downloaded at a fraction of the original price. We decided this would be a good idea as everyone would be kept happy with this method. To top of the day today we received our permission from our principal to go ahead with our idea. Hopefully it will be a success :)

Geography project

Transition has brought a lot of projects and hard work with it and one of these projects includes our geography project. In our geography project we have to plan a trip for ourselves to a country of our own interest. It would be helpful if this country had a lot of interesting sites and unique festivals. Our budget for our trip is €10,000. With our project we have to include flight details, accomodation , interesting facts about the country and the citizens from that country. My project is based on countries from the first world. I have to pick two countries from the first world to do this on. One of the countries i have chosen is Italy. I have chosen this country because i have visited it before and found that it has a lot of unique places that interest me. I want learn more about Italy and hopefully if i plan my trip well enough someday i may be able to follow my plan and visit all of the places. The places i would like to visit include : Pompeii and Herculaneum, Venice, Rome and the Colesseum, the Leaning Tower of Piza, Vatican city and i want to visit Milan during Milan fashion week. I have found this picture of Venice and the gondolas on google images.

Image from IgoUgo