Dragon Sensory Writing Tray

Dragons are taking over this week’s Virtual Book Club for Kids. The featured book is Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin. We’re sharing a dragon sensory writing tray that’s perfect for practicing pre-writing skills, letter formation, or even cursive. Be sure to check out all dragon themed activities at the end. I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

Dragons Love Tacos is one of our favorite books. So much so that Lily and Elon had a Dragons Love Tacos birthday party last year. Lily’s love for dragons all started with a bedtime story from her dad. This love has spread to her little brother. Together they have fun playing dragons. Dragons love tacos but be careful when you invite them to your taco party. They can only handle very mild salsa. If they get even a little spicy salsa, trouble occurs. And of course, as you can imagine, the dragons cause some trouble in the story. Don’t worry though, they help to fix everything. After all, they’ll work for tacos. Adam Rubin’s stories are full of humor even adults can appreciate. If you like Dragons Love Tacos, you’ll also want to check out the sequel aptly named Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel.

Dragon Sensory Writing Tray

Themed sensory writing trays are a fun way to practice different writing skills. Use them to practice the pre-writing skills of line formation and fine motor control. Sensory writing trays are also a great way to practice writing letters (either beginning letter formation or even cursive.) You can work on sight words or spelling words in a dragon sensory writing tray as well. Today I wanted Lily (almost 4) to work on fine motor control and pre-writing shapes.

Watch a video of the writing tray in action:

There are many options for what substrate you can use for the writing tray. (Try flour, salt, cornmeal, rice, etc.) I chose blue and green colored sand with some added glitter. Under the sand, I placed a piece of yellow paper.

I set out several dragons. Our stuffed dragon was sent to us by Penguin Kids in the Dragons Love Tacos box set. The good luck mini dragons were sent to us by Safari Ltd. (We love using them for our rainbow sensory bin.) Then I added a taco to the tray. I simply printed out taco clipart and glued it to a rock. Lastly, I created some cards with simple pre-writing shapes and lines.

I gave Lily four options for writing utensils – the magic wands (one with a star and one with a blue fuzzy pom pom), the dragons (the pink one is the perfect size for this), or her finger. She chose to explore all of the options. I think she preferred the star magic wand the most. Since we were dealing with dragons, Lily asked to dress up like one. She got dragon wings and a mask for her dragon birthday party last year.

I asked her to draw a line to help the dragon reach the taco (rock).

She had to help all of the dragons get to the taco. Then, she drew in the sand with the dragon.

Lily liked drawing paths for the dragons to walk on.

I call this dragon sensory writing tray a great success. Lily didn’t want to stop. Between drawing in the sand and playing with the dragons, she was having tons of fun. I’m leaving this setup for her to use again.

More Dragons Love Tacos Activities for Kids

Check out our Dragons Love Tacos birthday party complete with a color changing dragon egg hunt.

Learn how to make straw rockets for dragons and land them on the moon targets.

More Activities from the Virtual Book Club for Kids

See more dragon themed activities inspired by Dragons Love Tacos:

Feed the Dragon Taco Counting Math Game with free printable – Rainy Day Mum
Dragon Themed Positional Word Game – The Educators’ Spin On It
Smoking Dragon Science – Teach Beside Me
Printable Dragon Game for Kids – Mama Smiles

Also stop by the Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook group to see what others are sharing!

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