Book Review: A Work In progress by Connor Franta

In this book Connor Franta tells us about life beyond the camera, Connor Franta shares the lessons he has learned on his journey from small-town boy to Internet sensation so far.

Connor offers a look at his Midwestern upbringing as one of four children in the home and one of five in the classroom, he shares his struggles with identity, body image, and sexuality in his teen years; and his decision to finally pursue his creative and artistic passions in his early twenties, setting up his thrilling career as a YouTube personality and entrepreneur.

Exploring his past with insight and humor, his present with humility, and his future with hope, Connor reveals his private struggles while providing heartfelt words of wisdom for young adults. His words will relate with anyone coming of age in the digital era, but he has one core message for people of all ages: don't be afraid to be yourself and to go after what you truly want.

This full-color collection includes photography and childhood clippings provided by Connor and is a must-have for anyone inspired by his journey. I would highly recommend this book to any age as its an easy to read book and keeps you interested throughout. 

BT Young Scientist

We went to the BT Young Scientist on Thursday the 7th of January in the RDS, The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, commonly called the Young Scientist Exhibition, is an Irish annual school students' science competition that has been held in Dublin, every January since 1965. Students from all around the country can enter the competition to be in with a chance of winning.

We left the school at 9:15am and arrived at the RDS at 10am, we each got a yellow wristband and went inside. When we first went in we could see many projects lined up in rows and loads of people around!. We looked at some of the projects and went to go find our friends who were taking part in the competition, their project was about which gender lies more. After that we looked at some of the stalls such as the Intel one, and the veterinary one and lots more. We went to the food area and got in the que 

for pizza for agesss but it was worth it! After that Tara and I went to look at some of the primary school entries, one of the schools was doing a project on social media we got to do a survey on whether we were addicted to social media or not... turns out we are hahahaha. We then went back to the stalls and entered a competition, after that we went to the RSA stand outside and we learned about road safety. We then went to expedition hall and saw a robot show and Tara and I kept laughing because we didn't know if we were allowed be in the expedition hall... turns out we were allowed. but we kept laughing about it all through the show. then one of the robots kept going around the crowed and making fun of people and spraying them with water so when the robot came over to me and Tara, Tara kept hiding behind my shoulder and we couldn't talk we were laughing so much with fear of being sprayed by the robot.. he didn't actually spray us at all but we were terrified he was going to. We then went to the ice cream van and got ice cream and i kept laughing at Tara because her ice cream cone broke so she had to eat it really weirdly hahaha. After that we went outside the RDS and got the bus home, overall it was a really good day.

Mary Poppins

On the 16th of December we went to Mary Poppins in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, we got a bus from our school to the theatre at 11am, we arrived there at 12 and we had an hour to walk around the area.


We went to spar and bought a load of food and ate it by the docks, suddenly we noticed all these seagulls and pigeon's around us and flying over us and we started feeding them bread and naming them all. Some of the seagulls were huge! and kept taking the bread off the pigeon's,We then started taking selfies and group photos.

Then we got our tickets and went inside and climbed an endless stairs! to get to our seats. When we finally organised who was sitting where, we waited for the show to start. Mary Poppins is a musical its based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P.L Travers and the 1964 Disney Film, and is a fusion of various elements from the two. Some elements from the books that had been omitted from the film were restored, such as the walking statue and the ladders rising to the stars. Others were removed, such as the scene in which Uncle Albert gets caught on the ceiling, laughing. The show was amazing from start to finish with many laughs throughout the show and I would highly recommend the show for any age!!

Amber Flag Day

Amber Flag

This week we have been preparing for Amber Flag Day which is next week on Friday the 4th. The Amber Flag aims to encourage Schools, Colleges, Clubs, Societies and Organisations to promote and actively bring about a culture change in the promotion of positive mental health within the educational system and other organisations. It is to enhance the already good work that is going on where mental health is concerned by offering an award of a Flag. There is wonderful work going on in schools and clubs etc on an individual basis. What the Amber Flag will do is acknowledge these efforts and unite all schools/clubs/societies/community groups in the promotion of “Positive Mental Health”. 

Positive Mental Health aims to:

A. Promote mental health and well-being for all.

B. Prevent mental health problems through increasing awareness, social support, reducing risk factors such as racism, bullying and isolation.

C. Improving quality of life for students/people with mental health problems by promoting recovery through awareness and education.

The Week Before:

This week we have organised lots of things for Amber Flag Day such as events we are going to do on the day such as a Bake sale, and organised how we can spread positivity throughout the school. We had many ideas such as orange wristbands, dancing fairy's, singing and cardboard cut out where people can stick their head in and a positive message would be written above and on the day all TY's get to wear orange. Our whole year is split into many groups such as website, bake sale, fairies etc.

Pieta House:

All the money we raise goes to Pieta House, Pieta House is a centre for the prevention of self harm and suicide. It was opened nine years ago in Lucan and has helped over 18,000 people in suicidal situations or from engaging in self harm, They have opened up 8 centres across Ireland. In 2003 our founder and former CEO Joan Freeman, a practising psychologist closed down her own counselling business to dedicate her time to help people who were suicidal and help them through their dark time. Pieta House has over 180 therapists and staff and the demand for the service has only gone up, in 2014 over 5,000 people came through their doors looking for help. Every service they provide is free of charge and provide professional help. They are very passionate about their work and over 90% of the income comes from donation's.

Amber Flag Day
Amber flag was an amazing day full of positivity and happiness throughout the school. We started off the day by all going to the library, we were given an orange bracelet to wear for the day and any spare ones we had we gave them to other years in the school. The web committee presented their website to the rest of the year and our vice principal, a photographer from the Liffey champion newspaper came and took our photograph too. We all went out into the courtyard and took a group photo and we used some of the emoji boards to take some funny photos. We then had lunch and a girl from our class brought in two large bottles of Fanta to match our theme of orange to share. After little lunch we put up posters and sang songs with the busking group. Just before big lunch we all set up the bake sale in the hall and the face painting area in the library. Lunch finally came and my group went around taking photos of people using the emoji boards, we passed the busking group and most of the first years were singing the songs and their was a great atmosphere around the school. The bake sale was a  massive success, we sold all the cakes! It was a great day!

Christmas Cake

My Christmas Cake is made from Biscuit Cake, that I iced after.

Ingredients:

• 275g unsalted butter
• 150ml golden syrup
• 225g good quality chocolate
• 200g digestive biscuits (crushed)
• 200g rich tea biscuits (crushed)
• packet of marshmallows (mixed)
• 2 packets of white marshmallows
• 1 bag of icing sugar
• packet of maltesers 

Method:

1. Line a tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the butter, syrup and chocolate in a pan over a low heat.
3. Stir it to make sure all the ingredient's are well mixed together. 
4. Add the biscuits and maltesers.
5. Stir well.
6. Transfer everything that is in pan into the tin.
7. Level it on top and press down to avoid air gaps.
8. Allow to cool.
9. Wrap completely in cling film and store in the fridge.

Fondant Icing:

• Put 2 Bags of white marshmallows in a bowl in with 2 spoonfuls of water.
• Put the bowl in the microwave until mixture is completely smooth.
• Sieve the icing sugar in gradually until it becomes doughy. ( add food colouring if you want)
• Kneed the icing and separate into two balls, one for decorations and one for covering.
• Get a rolling pin and roll out icing, when you have shape you want, roll icing onto rolling pin and place over cake, fix edges and your cake should be covered.
• Get the other ball and mould it into any shape you want.
  

Kilkenny

In September we went to Kilkenny to go sea "song of the sea" in the IMC Cinema and we went to the expedition at Kilkenny castle after. We were supposed to get the bus at 8:30 but one of the girls from the other class, Laura, was late so we had to wait for her, so we ended up leaving the school at 8:50, on the bus I listened to music and talked to my friends. We arrived in Kilkenny at 10:20am and our teacher was having a mini panic attack because we only had 10 minutes to walk from outside killkenny castle where our bus was parked, to IMC Cinema. We ended up basically running from the castle to cinema, it was if our teacher was a duck and we were all her ducklings running after her across all these busy roads, passing restaurants, shops and bars with people starring at us with confusion.

After 20 minutes of running behind our teacher we got to the cinema!... 10 minutes late ahahaha, but it was okay because it was a private screening just for all the TY's in our school so we still had time to buy popcorn and sweets.

The movie is about Ben who is a young Irish boy, and his little sister Saoirse who is a girl who can turn into a seal,  that go on an adventure to free the fairies and save the spirit world. It was directed by Tomm Moore and includes many famous Irish actors including David Rawle, Brendan Gleeson, pat short and Fionnula Flanagan. I thought the film was very good and was different to other animations I have seen, it was very Irish and showed the culture of the Irish very well.

After we saw the film we walked to kilkenny castle and the group was split into 2 so while one group was looking at the expedition the other group got to walk around the grounds of Kilkenny castle and have their lunch. My group got to have their lunch first and walk around the grounds, but we all saw this playground and started running towards it not seeing the no over 12's sign. We all started swinging on the swings and having a laugh when suddenly we heard a man yelling at people from our class telling them to get out! we all started walking out and he gave us a massive lecture on how we should of known better! we walked out of playground and found some benches and Tara Sarah and I all sat down and started eating our lunch.

After our lunch we walked up to the castle and waited until our group was called, we were finally called and went inside to the expedition. We were showed how they make the animations and given loads of facts about the film, we got to draw some of the character's as well.
We then got the bus home, it was a really good day out!

Carlingford

So we went to CARLINGFORD!! We left at 8am, We all got on a bus and Ms. O' Callaghan took the roll. Tara and I listened to music most of the way there but as we got closer to Carlingford we took out our earphones and starred out the window, We kept asking Ms if we were there yet? and she kept telling us to be patient but we couldn't contain our excitement!!!

When we got there one of our leaders was standing outside our bus and she lead us to the centre. They brought us into the Rec room and told us to sit down while they organised today's activities for us. They split us into two groups, groups A and group B, I was put in group B. Group B's first activities of the day was canoeing, we took our swimming togs out and our towels and started walking down to the pier.

When we got to the pier we got a new leader called John who was very strict and told us to hurry up and get changed a lot! he then told us to get life jackets and helmets and grab one end of a canoe. we lifted the four big canoes into the water and started canoeing but at first we started going backwards! so we started saying 1,2,3,4 so we could all keep together and go straight. Our canoe got to the bank first and we all had to get off the canoe and onto the bank. Once all 30 of us were on the bank John pushed one of the girls in my class called Ciara off the bank into the freezing water and said "Dolores what are you doing?!" she started screaming with the shock of the cold water and she lost her shoe in the water and ended up walking back to the centre with no shoe hahaha. We all eventually jumped into the water and messed around and then we canoed back to where the changing rooms were.

When we got back to the centre we had our lunch which was actually really nice. Then we were told to go outside and wait for our leader called Roisin so we could do lazer tag, we each got an army suit and a gun. As we left it started to rain and we had to go up this MASSIVE hill...after like a half hour we got to the forest, we were already knackered. He brought us into this sheltered area to explain how to use the guns and how the game works. But then another leader saw us and asked of we wanted to team up with the boys? we all just shout "YEAH!".  We teamed up with the boys who were from Leitrim and we got split into two groups the red and blue team. We kept slagging the lads asking if they even have shops or toilets because they're from the middle of nowhere ahah. Lazer tag was so much fun even though we lost 3-1.

When we got back to our room we all had showers and dinner, dinner wasn't that nice. We were all told to go outside and wait for our leaders, we then walked up the MASSIVE hill again for the SECOND time in one day! When we reached the forest Roisin told us this story while another leader set up the nightline. Nightline is where u put on a bandanna so you cant see and hold onto a rope around a forest not knowing whats in front of you. Nightline was good but the best bit of the night was walking back to the centre, we went a weird way and walked through fields and fields and fields singing songs for
about an hour or two hahaha. We ended up at a castle where you  could see all of Carlingford.

When we got back to the centre our teachers let us go to the Chinese, chipper and sweet shop. Tara and I bought chicken nuggets and chips and Ice cream from the sweet shop. We all ended up trying to sleep around 1am but Sarah kept us all awake because she kept turning on the torch on her phone and talking and we had to keep telling her to shut up! we were woken up at 6am to the sound of two boys screaming "DANIEL!" "NATHAN!" and we were all pretty pissed off. At 7:30 there was announcement's into every room explaining to every school in the centre what they would be doing today. After the announcements they played music like the bear necessities and Ed Sheeran to keep us away and it got very annoying. We stripped the beds, got dressed and went down for breakfast.

Our leader told us we would be doing challenge island before we left, we started walking to a different forest and when we got there they told us that for every challenge we completed fully we got 5 gems and the group with the most gems wins. We had to go into a  pitch black maze, bring wood across to make a bridge, make a ball not fall off a board and walk on tyres, our team came third.

We then walked back to the centre and had lunch and waited for our bus to come, while we were waiting for our bus, lads from America arrived in the centre and we started playing volleyball with them but then they had to go and play lazer tag but we were all laughing at them because they were all wearing good clothes like Adidas, Nike and Hollister and it was raining and we knew how mucky the forest was hahaha. Our leader then called us back out to the volleyball court and we had to agree on what we would rate the centre, our bus arrived and we all got on the bus absolutely wrecked, but the trip was amazing!