Mary Wore Her Red Dress, Red Dress, Red Dress

When I was student teaching I worked with a lady who I think had been a Kindergarten teacher for about a million years and she was still fabulous at it. At the start of the year she began with a theme on colors. Although most of her kids had mastered colors several years ago she always liked to start with something they felt confident with and activities to learn each other’s names. One of these activities was developed around the book Mary Wore Her Red Dress.

In the story Mary Wore Her Red Dress, animals are heading to a birthday party. The book begins in black and white and as characters are introduced it is around their clothing and its color. So as Mary enters on the first page with her red dress all the other images on the page that are red start to appear and so it continues through the end of the book when finally all the colors are revealed. There is a song that goes with the book as well and you can usually purchase the book with an accompanying tape or CD.

After reading the book, the class would make their own big book to mirror the story. Ahead of time, we had cut out items of clothing (shirts, dresses, shorts, pants) in a variety of colors. Each child would then pick one piece of clothing and take it back to their seat. They would glue the clothing to a large piece of paper and then draw the rest of their body around the clothing. (This took a little modeling before they started, but they actually do a great job.)

Then at the bottom of the piece of paper we would write a sentence like in the text, such as “Peter wore his yellow shirt.” When all the pages were done, we would laminate them and make them into a class big book. The next day we would read our class big book together and “sing” the book like we did with Mary Wore Her Red Dress.

The kids love this big book and it was a class favorite they returned to over and over again to read in the library. Not only did it help some friends who may be shaky with colors, but more importantly it was another fun way to learn everyone’s name at the start of the year.