Drum Lessons

Collin has been taking drum lessons for several weeks now. He started them because he really liked drums the best when he attended his rock band class.  Currently, he attends lessons once a week on Friday afternoon at 5 PM for 30 minutes. He does not practice much if at all during the week.

However, his instructor said he is doing really good. It took the instructor a little while to figure out that Collin is ambidextrous. He thought that Collin was right handed until he saw that he is left hand dominant so he stopped correcting him to try to make him use his right hand more. After that, he said that Collins was really picking up each new drum move quickly.

Writing Camp

So that Collin will be ready for school and for us to have an idea of what he needs to work on, we have continued with academic camps.  This week, he was in a two hour writing camp lead by Ms Rincon.  She was his tutor last year and we really like her.

Let's just say that I was shocked when Collin came home Monday and said he loved the day and could not wait to go back tomorrow.  They got to pick a subject and had to start writing their first page of a book.  Collin picked Animals for his title and wrote about penguins his first day.  I have no idea what made him think about penguins to write about.  He drew a picture and then wrote about it.

Here are each of the pages in the book:

Title Page:  Love the drawings of each animal.

He said he was sad camp was over and wanted to do it again next week.  Let's see if he has a similar reaction to the math camp he is attending in the morning next week.

Last Tigers Game ... For Me

Tonight was the last Tigers game I would be able to see because I will be out of town for work for the last game Wednesday night.  So, I wanted to make sure that I took pictures of him catching, throwing, and running.  I did not get pictures of him hitting because people would not move out of my way when I asked them to move.  Because he is a Lefty, I have to take pictures of him hitting on the opposing team's side. 

Collin loved that Mimi showed up tonight to watch his game.  He did great at batting, hitting it every time.  He did get out one time because he just was not running fast and focused like I know he can.  He played outfield most of the time which he was not happy about.  The one time he played 2nd base, he missed a pop fly but then quickly threw to 1st base to get the runner out anyway.

The boys played hard but made too many throwing errors to end up losing the game.  Collin was not affected by this and was more focused on Mimi and wanting to get home to show her how he can ride his bike up and down the driveway and into the street. 

Geaux Tigers....and Collin!

The Tigers rocked it during the game last night.  Each time at bat, the boys hit the ball, got on base and quickly scored the maximum of 5 runs per inning.  Collin hit the ball each time he was at bat.  Once, the bases were loaded and he hit to the outfield bringing two runners in.  The next time, he got to 2nd and an RBI.

Because there were just enough players that showed up last night, Collin rotated between playing Pitcher and 2nd Base.  This time while he played Pitcher, he was more aware of what was going on and also knew he needed to pay attention more.  He stopped at least one or two balls from going to the outfield and caught every ball thrown to him from the infield to stop the play.  While he was playing 2nd base, he was involved in two great plays.  Once, he got a double by catching the fly ball and then tossing the ball to Short Stop covering 2nd base to get the runner out.  Another time, he stopped the ball from going to the outfield and ran to 2nd base to get the runner out.  I was shocked he was paying attention to do this because I saw him several times talking and swinging his arms like he was warming up for yoga class or something like that.  I yelled out for him to be "baseball ready" and he would stop for just a minute or two and then do it all over again.

Here he is at 2nd base stopping the ball...

....and then lobbing it over to Short Stop covering 2nd base

Here he is catching the ball....

...and then using all of his body to through it.  :)

More fielding the ball

He did catch this one.  He is not afraid to get in front of the ball.

Catching the ball during practice

Nice catch!

We were excited about how he played during the game and wanted to talk to him about it on the way home.  He was not interested and wanted to listen to some music.  

Drones and Droids Camp

This week, Collin attended Droid and Drone camp which was sponsored by the Engineering School of the local university.  The campers got to pilot their own "take home" quad-copters in “flight over fight” aerial missions paired with Lego Robotics. Teams competed in Drones and Droids variations of Capture the Flag, Race against Time, First Responder and Obstacle/Maneuverability Courses. At the end of the course, Collin got to take home his very own quad-copter. I really liked this camp because the kids had to learn to work as a team to build the droids and then choose a driver at the end of each day to compete.  Collin and Jacob where Team Colorfuls.  They chose the name because of the multiple colors of the legos they built the droids with.

Collin said this was the best camp he has been to and wants to go again.  He said it was even better than zoo camp...which was hard to believe because of home much he still talks about zoo camp. 

Here is a video of the drone he flew today.  The videos of the droids were too long to post.  They were really cute so I was hoping to make them work.

 

I told Collin to take pictures of some of his friends he met during the week.  Here are the pictures he took with his phone.  I thought he did a great job.

Summer Baseball

Reluctantly, Collin is playing summer baseball again.  He does not want to play but did not give us a reason.  Knowing how much he has really liked baseball in the past and knowing that he would be one of the older kids on the team, Dad signed him up anyway.  We did miss the first two weeks of games while we were on vacation.  One of the games was rained out so we have only missed three games.  They are usually Monday and Wednesday nights starting at 7pm.  Late games during the week are tough because we get home close to 9pm and Collin is ready to watch a movie, read books, play games and do anything else but go to bed.  I, on the other hand, am ready for bed because I get up generally around 5:15am to work out before heading to work. 

For both Monday's and last nights game, Collin played Pitcher a lot.  He does not pitch the ball because this is still Coach pitch but he stands there to field the ball and stop the "play" on the field.  He gets a lot of action in that spot because the catcher also throws him the ball after the pitch if it's not hit.  He does not like this spot because he gets nervous about where to through the ball if he gets it.  At first, he did not move towards the ball when it was hit leaving it up to the other infield players to get the ball.  He did figure out that he is expected to field the ball too and went after two hit balls during Wednesday's game.  There were a few times he should have thrown the ball the 2nd base to get the runner out but, instead, he through the ball the 1st which is a longer throw so it takes the ball longer to get there.  He also does not like to wear the mask that you see in the pictures below.  He is required to wear this for protection from the hit balls.  I am fine that he does wear this because I have seen what happens to the boys that don't wear this.  I don't want my little guy to get hurt.



Because he is a good hitter, he is at the top of the batting order.  He hit second last night hitting every time he was at bat.  All of his hits made it past the infield and had more power behind them than his hits did in the Spring because he is using his entire body to hit the ball now.

Caught him in the dugout talking to team members and getting a cold drink because it was 98 degrees out even thought it was 7:30pm. 

Coach Bennett is really great with the boys.  He is calm but direct with his instruction.  I really like that and the boys seem to really like him as well.  Here he is at the end of the game talking through what happened and discussing some things the boys need to work on.  Collin is right in front of him (#5). That's Dad also listening in.