Dragons Love Tacos Book Activities & Freebie!

Since May is C R A Z Y, I am trying my best to make therapy planning easier for all of us. This book is the perfect answer to that! Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin and illustrated by Daniel Salmieri is a fun read, full of great descriptive vocabulary, and a subject that most kids love… dragons and tacos! I've got some ideas on how to incorporate this book into ALL of your therapy sessions and make it last for a couple of weeks! These activities are designed to use in mixed groups, so you can pick and choose what works for your students and ride it out for several sessions.

Book Companion

Up first is a no-prep book companion that targets skills like comprehension, vocabulary, retelling, prepositions, and phonological processes. It includes different levels for the included skills and makes meeting the needs of your students a breeze!

Hands On

When I found these felt tacos I had to have them! You can use them with many other activities, but they really do go perfectly with the story. I like using them after reading the story to work on basic vocabulary, requesting, answering yes/no questions, colors, and play skills. I like to set up a ‘taco bar' and have the kids order…you can work on speech and language with dramatic play! You can also easily make them yourself with felt from a craft store or even with paper…. keep reading!

Articulation

Some people think that literacy is hard to do in articulation therapy, but I disagree. Research shows that many of our students with articulation and phonological disorders are also going to have difficulty with reading, so it's really important that we work to bridge that gap. I created these dragon spinners to use to reinforce articulation after reading the story. If you have a mixed group, you can combine with the book companion pages above or pick any sound and target language skills like making sentences and describing functions or attributes.

Prefer Boom Cards? I have those too! These are animated so that the kids practice their sounds while putting toppings on the tacos, then they feed the dragon.

Craft

What is a book unit without a craft? Yall already know how much I love incorporating crafts into my therapy because it is so engaging and functional. This one is SUPER easy, just cut some yellow circles and brown/red/green small rectangles. I glued them to the edge so that they stick out a little, then fold the circle in half…

And voila! It's a taco! You can add words to the strips of paper… have your artic kids find their sound in the story and write them down, look for synonyms or antonyms, descriptive words, specific grammar structures…anything!

Freebie

These dragon emotion tasks cards are a fun way to work on feelings and vocabulary. They come in both color and b/w so you can choose what works best for your students. To grab them, just fill out your name and email in the box below!

I hope that gives you some fresh ideas for using Dragons Love Tacos with ALL of your speech and language therapy! If you don't have it in your classroom, check your school's media center or your coworkers. You can also find it on Amazon.