Family Book Club: Dragons Love Tacos

My boys LOVE the book Dragons Love Tacos and it was a natural choice for our second Family Book Club.  

We started the day off with breakfast tacos.  I used two serape scarves that I already had, some chili pepper lights, flowers leftover from the baby shower I hosted last weekend and the dragon hat from Mason's Knight party to decorate the table. 

The kids FLIPPED over the lights.

I found these little "Make Your Own Taco" sticker activity books for $1.26/each on Amazon and they were a fun activity to keep the natives occupies while Dave and I got breakfast going.

The stickers were removable and they had a great time sticking and resticking their tacos.

Who wants breakfast tacos?!?!?!

Dave read the story this time and, of course, he had to wear the dragon hat.

 

Our first activity of the day was to paint the taco shells for our paper tacos we would be putting together later in the afternoon.

I printed out some dragon mask templates I found on cardstock and the kids colored them with markers and crayons.  I taped a cut rubber band to the sides but they kept snapping and so we opted for holding them up instead :)  

Next time I would glue a popsicle stick to the mask instead of trying the rubber band.

Peek-a-boo!!!

Lunch was leftover taco pasta, which is SUPER simple and yummy.

Brown 1 lb of lean ground beef.  Add in 1 cup water and 1 packet taco seasoning and let it simmer about 5 minutes (or until most of the liquid has cooked off).  Add in 6 oz of cream cheese and stir until melted.  Add in about a cup of shredded cheese and about 3/4 of a box of penne pasta (already cooked)... (I use 3 cups of dry pasta).   Stir it all together and voila!!!

After Griffin went down for a nap the boys and I did a science experiment with taco sauce and pennies.  I prepped the table with "directions" and space for us to conduct the experiment.

First we took a dirty penny and covered it in taco sauce.  After a few minutes we scrubbed it and rinsed it off and voila!  It was clean!

So now to find out what made it clean...  First step, we put a dirty penny next to each of the individual ingredients (salt, water, vinegar and tomato paste) and covered the pennies in each of the individual ingredients.  

We washed those pennies off and they were still dirty.  So we concluded that it wasn't any individual ingredient that was cleaning the penny.  It must be a combination!

We tried three different combinations of ingredients and then waited for the results.

After rubbing and rinsing the final three pennies, it was obvious that it was salt and vinegar together that were responsible for shining up the penny.  We talked about chemical reactions and about how sometimes when you put two ingredients together they change and are more powerful than they were by themselves.  We'd had a "morning" so I stretched it and we talked about how sometimes brothers can do bigger and better things when they work together :)  #momwin

We cleaned up science, played for a bit and then got into craft mode.

Each of the boys picked out a plastic cup and we ripped strips of red and yellow crepe paper and then taped them to the inside of the cup.

I hot glued pom poms and googly eyes onto the top and cut an x in the bottom of the cup for a straw to fit in.  Then they blew into the straw and the fire breathing dragon came to life! :)

Next up was finishing our paper plate tacos!  We shredded up some brown craft paper and then more red and yellow crepe paper. 

I forgot to take progress pictures, but we glued and taped the three papers down to the inside edge of the plate, then I hot glued the green crinkle on.  We folded the plates in half, stapled and admired our tacos!

After crafting, the boys wentand played and I cleaned up and set up our "Taco Party" for dinner.

I used their crafts from the day to decorate and they were so proud to show them off.

    

And for dinner??? More tacos. hahaha 

 I forgot that I had ordered these dragon stickers, so after dinner I came up with a quick little activity for the boys.  

I put one of each of the stickers along the bottom of a piece of paper and then labeled them each with a number . Then they had to "stack" that number of matching stickers on top (creating a little graph).

We had so much fun on Dragons Love Tacos Day and I had the best time coming up with activities for us to do together throughout the day.  If the "mess" and clutter of crafting with your kids stresses you out, here's a little tip.  The nigh before I go through my craft supply closet and pull out what I'm going to need for the next day. Throughout the day as we're playing and crafting I pull things from the basket and then throw it all back in there when we're done.  It keeps the mess minimal and puts everything we're using at hand. 

If you don't have Dragons Love Tacos in your family library, you can pick it up on Amazon HERE (and it's on sale!!!).

I'm hoping that you can pull an activity (or two!) from here for your own Family Book Club day.  PLEASE don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!!!