Banish Viscious Circles with a Positive Party

Anna has written about her Positive Party experience last week. Sounds like TY had a great day learning how to get through the stresses of TY! Why not pop by Anna's blog later in the year to see what else TY has in store?

The Viscous Circle

"Put your thinking in, put your thinking out, in, out, in, out and
 shake it all about. Do the hockey pokey and you turn around, 
and that's what its all about. Ooooooooh, the viscous circle, 
ooooooooh the viscous circle, ooooooh the viscous circle, and 
that's what it's all about!"

Positive Parties

Of course, anyone who wasn't at our Positive Party on Wednesday
would think I'm an absolute lunatic right now (and I apologize if this
applies to you) but any of the girls who were there will know exactly
what I'm on about!

The Positive Party is exactly what it sounds like - we wore hula necklaces,
ate sweets, sang and just had a really positive day. We talked about our
happiest memories and learned how to channel those memories when
we're feeling upset.

I'm pretty sure this sums up how everyone felt at the party!

It was so much fun - we made so many great memories and we really
had a genuinely good time; everyone came out with big smiles on their
faces, in a brilliant mood!

After the Positive Party, a speaker talked to us about confidence, 
different personality types, and how to go after our dreams. It may 
not have been as exciting and fun as the party, but he gave us some 
good tips and I came out of the room feeling a little more confident.

After lunch we learned how to give massages - my partner was 
Laura and oh my god, if you ever need a massage she is definitely 
the person to go to! I felt so relaxed afterwards, she is the best. It 
was a great experience to learn how to do that, I'm really glad I got
the opportunity!

All in all, Wednesday was a brilliant day and I cant wait for the next
workshop!

Challenge Busters of Carlingford!

More fun from our Carlingford teambuilding trip.

If I had a boat.......

.....I'd go out on the water!

TY's go kayaking at Carlingford.

Party Payback

Niamh tells more ....

"Earlier on in the school year, just before we broke up for the Christmas holidays, class Emnet prepared a lovely breakfast for all of us in class Amina. We were very thankful for what this breakfast and so we decided to make it up to them this morning.
We did this by inviting them to our "Easter Feaster"! :)

Read the rest of Niamh's post and find out all about the "EasterFeaster" here. Lots of lovely photos of food too!

Mrs L :)

A Christmas breakfast

Siobhan was blogging today about the Christmas breakfast that class Emnet help for class Amina this morning.

"Today we had a Christmas breakfast hosted by class Emnet. We had if for the first class and it went into a few minutes into the other class. We had a really good time. There was lots of food and hot chocolate and marshmallows and sweets and things like that. It was a great morning. Everybody had great fun and they all got lots of food. There was music and it was a brilliant morning.

Mrs L got us started signing.........

Latest news from Carlingford

Ms O Callaghan sent me a text this morning to say that everyone seemed to have a good day yesterday and she expected a few very tired students at breakfast this morning!
The weather has picked up in Celbridge and I hope it does the same in Carlingford.

TY's return tonight at 7pm and are in school tomorrow for their Junior Cert results. Good luck to them all :)
Mrs L

Carlingford bonding trip

Good luck to classes Amina and Emnet on their TY bonding trip to Carlingford Adventure Centre, Co Louth. I just looked up the weather forecast and guess what?.... rain on Monday, rain on Monday night, rain on Tuesday morning, rain on Tuesday night :( Oh dear.

Hopefully the girls will be having so much fun they won't notice the rain!

Check out the Adventure Centre website here.

Mrs L

Carlingford bonding trip

On Wednesday the 16th September, TY set off for Carlingford Adventure Centre, Co. Louth. The purpose of this trip was to bond with other people in our year and to learn to work as a team.

We set off at 7am (although some people were half an hour late!) and to arrive at 9am. We all had a big singsong on the bus on the way there because we were all buzzing with excitement.

We arrived at the centre and were arranged into our bedrooms, most people were happy and got rooms with their friends.

We were then put into two groups and went out to our first activity, either a land or a water activity. After our first activity, we came back, had lunch, and got to know the instructors a bit more.

Many activities later, and after a sleepless night for many, (thanks for that Louise!) we began our long journey home. Due to our sugar over load and lack of sleep, the bus ride home dragged on for what seemed like eternity, many people fell asleep in the strangest positions, and that was when the cameras came out!

Even though we photographed our friends when they were at their worst, I assure you it was out of love! We learned that Kelli is the least threatening person ever, that Grainne and Sarah like to dance, that Sinead has a major ability to lose her camera, that Caroline is comfortable in wet shoes and that Louise is somewhat nocturnal!

But the most important thing that I learned in Carlingford is not that we are all different, but that deep down, we’re all the same. We are just a group of teenage girls that want to have fun! (And, take pictures of Sebastian!)
Pamela

Social Development Day

In September we were visited by Austin Dunne of Stay Focussed Training, Celbridge, for a social development day, to help each of the TY classes, Selam and Desta my own class, bond better.

At the beginning some people felt awkward because we were asked about one embarrassing thing that happened to us, but in the long run it benefited the day because people became more open.

We introduced each other to find out more about our other classmates and then we played games, and got in to different groups to get to know everybody in the class, especially those that we didn’t usually talk to.

We made posters in our groups to learn to work together to produce something, and we had two separate debates that taught us to listen to each other and respect other peoples points of view.

We did simple personality tests to find out more about ourselves and in the process we also found out more about each other.

There were four different types of people that we could be, Yellow were crazy and fun loving, Green were calm and caring, Red were loud, forceful and very opinionated, and Blue were observing, punctual, and matter of fact. (I’m a boring blue I’m afraid!)

We also learned if we were introverted or extroverted, which helped us to learn to calm down or speak up.

Austin taught us how to use body language and tone in our favour to get across the message that we want to portray.

Austin also did a test with ‘Tayto’ and ‘King’ crisps to see if anybody could tell the difference. Not many people could which showed that advertising swayed our opinions. It was handy because many people’s bellies were rumbling at that stage!

Austin came back to visit us a few weeks later to award us our certificates which we will receive properly at the end of the year on TY night. It’s gonna be awesome WOOO! =D

Pamela