I was in group ‘D’ and we got to go down into the beach and play games first with group ‘C’. We played team bonding games and we all had fun and got to bond together as a year. 

After that we then went up and got our wetsuits on and made our way back down onto the beach to go out surfing. The waves weren’t great but we all attempted to try and catch some waves and show off our surfing skills. Most of us spent half of the time laughing in the water and having a great time together but there was others who we watched in awe as they made surfing look so easy.

 After surfing we got to go downtown for our lunch for an hour and then we all met back at main beach to start more activities in the evening. We got back into the wetsuits, that was the only bad thing about the day having to put on wet wetsuits again. 

For our first evening activity my groups ‘D’ and group ‘C’ walked out to the Thrupenny pool and we started our team task of building a stable raft. We had to compete against group ‘C’ to see which team was able to build a raft and get across from one side of the pool to the other quickest and without falling off the raft. We had to use barrels,wood and rope to create our raft and try make it the best one. I got to be the person to sit up on the raft and the rest of the team had to push me from one side to the other, it was scary putting my trust in the team not to let me fall but it was very fun getting to sit up on it and get pushed along the water. 

We then went over to the diving boards and got to go cliff jumping. I am scared of heights so I didn’t jump too high but it was still a good time with my classmates. After the boards we made our way back over onto the beach and the whole year got to go into the water and mess about and go swimming together.

 In my opinion it was a great day,we all really enjoyed ourselves and bonding as a year. Now I feel more comfortable talking to different people in the year that I didn’t really talk to before and I feel like I can go and have fun with other people that I wasn’t really friends with already. I would love to go and do it all again because of how enjoyable it was and it’s made me really excited for the year ahead

 We all met in room1 and room2 and Ms Fox talked to us about the safety rules and told us the plan for the day. We got the equipment needed together and made our way down to the car park behind American House.

When we all arrived down in the car park we looked over from where we were to across the bay and studied everything we could see. We had to write down everything we could see, for example, we could see sea cliffs,wave-cut platforms,sea caves and many more. 

After we wrote down everything we knew, we made our way over to the promenade and took a seat on the wall to draw the coastlines. That was my least favourite part of the day, having to draw the coastline because I can’t draw and don’t like that part of geography. 

We walked Roguey,we made a stop at the fairy bridges and Ms Fox talked about the geography terms we could see from that point. Then we headed down to Tullan Strand and did more geography experiments. We went down to the water and threw in oranges to the water as an experiment, we also had to count the waves. 

I really enjoyed the day and had a great time carrying out the geography tasks. I learnt more about geography than I knew before and I was also able to help people who didn’t do geography in the junior cert. I would love to go on another geography trip throughout the year. 

We arrived at the golf course and started our lesson at 9:50. We got an instructor called Matthew for the 40 minute lesson. It was very fun and I enjoyed the golf a lot. I wasn’t good at it but I still had fun attempting it. I would love to go to the golf again.

She made us all comfortable and we were all able to talk to her. She made the workshop fun and enjoyable but everyone still took it serious and was able to bring something out of it.

We talked about how dealing with emotions and how to stay calm in certain situations. She gave us tips on how to deal with feelings,mostly angry and frustration.

 I loved the workshop and Colleen was very friendly and I can’t wait till the next workshop.

This week Colleen talked to us about confidence. We got a sheet and had to write what others I’ve said to us and what we say to ourselves and how it made us feel. 

We had to say what we think signs of confidence are and we talked about how to gain more confidence and exercises to do to be more confident in ourselves.

The workshop this week was really good and I can’t wait for next weeks workshop with Colleen.

Alannah and Erica organised a selfie challenge for our full year to compete in,they wrote out clues and put together teams for the challenge. 

We got the last three classes of the day to compete. First we got split up into our teams, I was in a team with Daniela,Ben,Brion,Luke and Maitiu. We were the first team to go out and start the competition. 

We went out of the class and got to take a picture of the clues and had to solve where the location for the clue was, then we ran to the locations. 

We had to run around the town and take a team selfie at every location. We ran back to the school and found out our time, it took us 23 minutes to finish the whole challenge. Our team finished with the fastest time and won loads of sweets. 

After everyone was back from that challenge we got to compete in another challenge, our next challenge was to see who could take the best team selfie. We had 10 minutes to go and take a picture that we thought would win the challenge. Our team took a selfie hanging on the goal posts and another selfie while we were in a pyramid. Our team came in 3rd place in that challenge and 1st place was a very funny recreation of the picture of the teachers in China. 

The day was so fun and everyone laughed so much and bonded in their teams. I would love to have another challenge like the ones we did today. 

We started off by doing a warm up that consisted of running on the spot,burpees,push-up,sit ups,planks. 

We then got to take it in turns of three and got to try to do leaps,box jumps and turns. We watched Michelle’s dancers and learnt how to do it then everyone gave it a try. 

After that we got back into our lines and Michelle started teaching us our dance that we will continue to learn every week. 

I loved the workshop and can’t wait to for the next workshops. The dancing was so much fun and was funny to watch the boys dancing,the boys all pretended they didn’t like it up but they really did. 

During this weeks workshop we learnt how to organise yourself and get jobs done. She taught us to break down our task that we have to do into groups and sort it out. The first step is to get the problem,then break the problem down into smaller problems,then do one at a time. 

We have our last workshop with Colleen next week and I feel like I have really benefited from these workshops.

We had our talk in room 1 from 2:05 to 2:45 with our tutor class. Killian picked me to help him out by clicking the button to change the slides for him on his PowerPoint presentation. 

Killian taught us how to float in water and how to help save someone who is drowning by not putting yourself in danger. We also learnt the dangers of the water and how to stay safe and keep other people safe in the water. 

At the end of the talk Killian have us all balloons and badges from the RNLI. I found this water safety talk interesting and it was very beneficial because I love going in the water with my friends at the beach and now I know how to help someone in danger. 

We started of the workshop warming up, we did jogging on the spot,jumping jacks,push ups,planks,v-sit and mountain climbers. I found the plank the hardest because the floor was slippy and made me slide everytime I tried doing the plank.  

We got to practise our leaps,box jumps and turns, we also learnt how to do new turns and everyone gave it a go. 

At last we got to practise our dance routine and learnt more of the dance. I hurt my knee during dancing because I’m not very good at it but I still enjoyed myself. 

I love doing the dance workshop and look forward to doing it again. 

Conor,David,Ryan,Jessica,Grace and Daniela all organised the games for the day. They boiled eggs and left some raw, and filled over 200 water balloons. 

Our first game we partnered up with a friend,stood at cones and threw eggs up in the air for our partner to catch. Everytime we caught the egg we had to move further apart and the raw egg would eventually crack onto someone. 

Our next game we all stood in a circle and had the water balloons in the middle and spun a bottle of water. Whoever the bottle landed on had to grab a water balloon and everyone else ran away and the person with balloon had to throw it at people. This was my favourite game of the day.

The last game was another egg game. We all stood around in a circle and passed eggs around the circle,when the timer went off whoever had the egg in their hand had to crack the egg on their head and see whether it was raw or boiled. 

The games got us all very messy but everyone had so much fun and all bonded as a year. Two of the boys filled a bucket of water and poured it over Mr.Reilly at the end of the day. The day was so funny and I loved it. I would love to do something like this again.

We started off the workshop by talking about the past few weeks  and what we all thought of the workshops and what he have learnt.

Colleen handed out our books and we got started into the workshop for this week. This week we talked about how we are feeling such as our happiness level,tension/anxiety and closeness to others, we had to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5.

Next we talked about everything that makes us happy, we all wrote down a lift of everything that makes us happy into our book on the happy list.

This workshop was very good and I feel like I benefited from all the four weeks, Colleen was very helpful and a lovely person to talk to. I would like more workshops like this in the future.

I was in group 2 and we got to go down to the hall for our dance lesson at 3 till 4:05. To start of the lesson we warmed up, we jogged on the spot, done push-ups,press ups, crunches and squats. 

We then went into four groups and Michelle and her dancers showed us turns, jéte’s and box jumps.

After that we all went into lines and Michelle taught us a new dance. The dance was so fun and everyone loved trying it and all had a laugh. 

After we got the hang of the dance we performed it in the style of a flash mob and it was great everyone had a go. 

I loved doing the dance workshop all the weeks and had great fun every class we had. I would love to do a workshop like this again and would recommend people to try a dance class.

They set the games up in the hall and they were great. Everyone started with 6 lives and had to get as far through the games as possible. Some of the games included cup stacking,limbo,blindfold obstacle,ball games and a few more. 

I got all the way till the second last round with 4 lives remaining, this round was the blindfold obstacle. This was the funniest game of the day everyone laughed at people doing this game. I was horrible at this round and lost all my remaining lives, I kept going off the track of the obstacle and away from the way I was meant to go. I failed at this terrible but it was great fun and everyone had a laugh at me doing it. 

Most people lost out on the same round as me, but there was still a few people left remaining in the running for the winning price of a €20 JD voucher. Unfortunately no one actually won the voucher but the closest people to winning was Ryan Barrett,Grace Bell and Shanice Bell. 

Ben, Ruairi and Andrew did a brilliant job at organising the games and very one had a great time participating.

Daniela and I had organised both of these activities and put in hard work to put the day together. We had to sit down and think of all the games and if they were all able to work out with covid restrictions. We organised all the games and made the items we had to make for the games to work. 

On Wednesday Daniela,Ben,Ruairi and I walked down to Lidl and bought 40 pumpkins and sweets for the full day of games. We then had to push the 2 massive boxes of pumpkins from Lidl all the way to the school. That part was so funny because we struggled so much and care driving past definitely thought we were crazy.

 

Daniela and I had to write out dares and blow up balloons for the first Halloween game. The first game you had to go up and pop a balloon and you go either a Halloween themed dare,something rotten to eat or if you were lucky you just got sweets. 

Another one of the games was drink pong with a bad twist, there was two cups of water and a cup of water with vinegar. This game was the funniest because people were nearly getting sick drinking the vinegar cup.

In the evening we all got our pumpkins and started thinking of our carving ideas. Ms Higgins gave us tips on how to get it perfect and helped us along the way. Some of the pumpkins were amazing and very creative but there was also some pumpkins that people just ruined, they were funny though. 

Overall there dull day was great and everyone seemed to have a laugh and have fun in their costumes.