With summer coming to an end, I decided to bake something to remind me of the hot days- what could be more summery than raspberry lemonade? These little minis were such a hit at my work bake-sale. People bought them two for a dollar!
I went the easy way and bought a lemon cake mix- whipped these up and baked them according to to the box. I watched them a little closer making sure not to over bake since they are minis.
I found some cute cupcake liners with little lemons on the bottom of them. They were on sale which made them even better!
Voila!
The icing recipe was a buttercream that I added a few drops of red food coloring and a teaspoon of Raspberry Extract instead of vanilla.
I didn’t have a pastry bag so I used a Ziploc and cut off a corner…this made a big mess. This works in a pinch, but next time I will make sure I have a pastry bag handy.
These little yummies were so fun to decorate.
Aren’t they so cute?
Here they are all dressed up!
The fresh raspberry on top really added a nice pop of flavor.
Delicious!
Many years ago, we created this recycle bin project, using materials found in our recycle bin. You could create practically anything from our recycled crafts list using items that are going to be thrown away or recycled. The benefit is that these items are free and they develop all of the skills that kids crafting does. As a therapy tool this is great for building fine motor skills, visual motor skills, and more.
Let’s see what we made…
Recycle Bin Project
We used a few items from the recycle bin:
Empty cereal box
Paper tube
Empty cracker boxes
We also used a few items from our craft supplies: masking tape and markers
The nice thing about a recycle bin project is that the sky is the limit! All you need is the items in the recycling container and your imagination.
Develop Skills with a Recycling Bin Project
Just look at the skills kids develop with an activity as simple as building with cardboard and tape.
Multi-step planning, Handwriting, Cutting, Coloring, Painting, Taping, Tearing, Creativity, Imagination…this one’s got it all 🙂
Big Sister and I had a couple of hours to ourselves when the other kids were napping one afternoon. We went on a hunt for crafting materials in an interesting place…the recycle bin!
I pulled the boxes out and Big Sister used her imagination to decide what to make with them. She came up with a plan…a castle for barbie!
She helped me to tear the tape and construct the castle, instructing me what we needed to do first, and second, and third…We decided to work on a list. Big Sister wrote each word on a page in her notebook and she would turn the page as we did that part. (This was such a great planning project!)
She said we needed to make a flag for the castle, so I told her how to spell “flag”.
This age is so much fun. She asks all the time how to spell words as she writes them out.
After she wrote the word, she drew her flag and colored it in. She cut out the shape and taped it to her flag pole (paper towel tube).
Babies woke up…They played a fun game of “put some markers into a box and then take them out”.
They loved it.
We took the whole thing outside and painted it, added stickers, and stuck on gems.
And played.
The bad guys even showed up…This is The Green Lantern sneaking into the castle.
Not bad for some old boxes. Lots of creativity in that trash!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
