Smooth(ie) Sailing into Summer

Our last group of the school year had to be a delicious one.  Give 'em a happy memory and they'll happily come back for more next fall, right?  Well, the students seemed like they were going to enjoy the fruit we brought this morning for our smoothies, but no one said "Yes" to a sampling...

My speech-language pathologist buddy and I decided to try out my new, skinny baggies for creating homemade popsicles, using the leftovers from our smoothie making.  Well, all the blended fruit ended up in the bags since no one was brave enough to sip their smoothies.  Shucks.

Here are photos of our morning adventure with students in a high school program for students with autism:

Communication--paper and digital

Our sample popsicle-in-the-making.  The colors varied according to the fruit blends.

A quickly fabricated, homemade funnel for filling the popsicle bags.

This heavily-vibrating blender is activated by pressing down on the container. 
You believe me when I tell you that it won't hurt you, don't you???

Pouring the blended fruit into the funnel and popsicle bag.



Students chose a combination of strawberries, dark cherries and bananas.
We also added a little water to make sure it would swirl easily in the blender.

Some students need lots of words on their communication boards.

Sorry, you can't have just a banana smoothie today.

 

 

The parent-teacher group at our high school has given us Walmart gift cards for the past three years, to help with the expenses associated with our groups.  Some parents also give gift cards to the teachers to help with expenses for extra classroom materials.  Several of my schools develop class businesses to learn pre-vocational skills, social skills and to raise funds for special projects.  Gourmet dog biscuits, fancy soaps, weekly potato "bars," Friday coffee carts, cut-paper stationery, scented sugar scrubs--it's fun to see how well the students step up and improve their fine motor and "people" skills via these school-based opportunities.