Tuesday Tee Ball

Joshua had tee ball tonight, and similar to how Joanna went to gymnastics yesterday with Clara, she wanted to go see Joshua play tee ball tonight.  The session is broken up into two parts.  The first half is practice, where the kids get to work on hitting, fielding, and running the bases.  The coach helps them, and here Joshua gets some instruction on hitting.

The second half is a "game" where they play another team. Each team gets to bat twice, each time going through their lineup with each player batting once. Here Joshua prepares to crush the ball.

And here he crushes it.  Well, no one really crushes it.  At this age they all pretty much just hit weak grounders, with the occasional line drive.

Here he plays on defense, waiting for a ball to come to him.  He's not as aggressive as most of the other kids on his team who will pounce on any ball near them.  Joshua pretty much hangs out, and if a ball happens to end up near his feet, he'll pick it up.  They are then supposed to throw to first, but that rarely works out.  Regardless, the runner gets to go to first and stay there.  With each successive hit, they move up a base.  Here Joshua stands on second, unaware that a ball has already been hit (you can see it in the grass behind him) and that he should be running to third.  This is not that uncommon, as the kids don't really seem to grasp baserunning.  They move one base for each batter, finally scoring by crossing home plate as he does in the last picture.  For the last batter of the inning, everyone rounds the bases.  So essentially everyone scores in every inning, so there's no need to try to keep score, because it's always the same.

In the previous scoring picture you'll notice some familiar fans in the background.  Joshua didn't originally know they were they until he crossed home plate.  He was excited to see family members there to watch him.

After the game, they get snacks and drinks, with today's being Capri Sun and mini cookies.  They then do their team cheer and line up to shake hands (well, it's a low five more than anything) with the other team.

So far it's been a really good experience for him as he learns some life skills (paying attention, following instructions, etc.) and some actual baseball skills, like running to a base, which is not something I had done with him while playing with his tee in the back yard, but I'll be sure to add that in next time we have another session in the back yard.