Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Last Day of Camp

I posted a month ago about Henry starting camp and now . . . (POOF) . . . camp is over. I cannot believe four weeks flew by so quickly. I guess the reason I did not blog more about camp was that it was remarkably uneventful. I don't mean boring, I mean without incident! Henry had a great time. I know that he participated as well as he could in all the events and activities (the stuff that was entirely verbally based was challenging) and he made friends (one of his new friends even made him a really sweet card about how much he likes Henry!) Other kids were happy to see him at drop off (and Henry was happy to see the other kids too).

This camp is University-themed so every two weeks is a "semester" (you can sign up to attend in two-week chunks). Each "semester" the campers choose a major and two electives for their small group activities and then the rest of the day is spent with the whole camp group. On the last day of each semester, the kids perform for all the parents, demonstrating what they learned in their various electives and majors. We missed the show after Henry's first semester because he overheated in the park that morning and got sick, so we were looking forward (with a little nervousness though) to this one. First up for Henry was his digital recording group -- Henry and a whole bunch of girls!!! The group wrote a song and learned about recording (he came home with a CD that he made). Henry hid behind his lyrics sheet for much of this (singing though) but at the end began to warm up, sing in a louder voice and dance a bit! Next was his chess group. The instructor chose Henry to go first and asked a whole series of questions -- all of which Henry capably answered!!! His Story Pirates "major" talked about the solar systems they created as part of their story writing/acting exercises (Henry was a bit shy and quiet explaining his -- which was based on a Jimmy Neutron episode -- but when the instructor said something incorrect about it, Henry was quick to correct her!). He also got a beautiful copy of the illustrations all the kids made -- he is a terrific artist. Finally the whole camp group sang "We are the World" (the head of his camp proudly told me that Henry learned the entire song and that he had a great time in camp!) All of the campers were terrific and demonstrated lots of different electives. Everyone did a great job. Here is video of Henry answering his chess questions (sorry the audio is not better).

Victorian (Victory!) Gardens

They say a picture is worth a thousand words . . . this one speaks for itself (that's Henry in the yellow Crocs). . .

Yesterday afternoon, Cliff and Henry headed to Victorian Gardens in Central Park. Until recently such a trip was not possible because of Henry's motion sickness problems. He still gets arbitrarily carsick (that's the "fun" of it -- you never know when it will happen (e.g., straight road, constant speed -- not necessarily safe)!). However, his vestibular system obviously is making gains - he spun around on this thing just fine (I think that vestibular issues are one component of motion sickness though not the entire story). They had a great afternoon.