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.

The ABCs of a Kindergarten Year

Throughout the year, we worked to create enough class big books so each child would have one to take home at the end of the school year. The last class big book we made was the The ABCs of Kindergarten.  

To start the project I wrote down the side of a large piece of chart paper the letters of the alphabet. As a class, we brainstormed different things we had done this year, topics we had learned about, parts of our day, or special events that started with each letter. We tried to make sure we had at least one thing for each letter. At times we had to get creative, such as eXtra ____ for X, but most times we ended up with at least several ideas for each letter.

Each child would select a letter to illustrate for our big book. If they choose a letter with multiple ideas, they could pick their favorite one. So for example, if M had math and music, he or she only picked one to illustrate and write for the book.

After each child completed their page (usually a 12x18 sheet of cream construction paper) by writing the word or phrase (”going to the zoo” or “reading”) and illustrating that idea, I laminated the pages, punched holes in the side, and attached the pages together in alphabetical order to form our final class big book, The ABCs of Kindergarten. Over the years I found that the metal rings that you can buy at any office supply store were the easiest way to bind the books together.  

The book joined the other class big books in the library, where the children loved to read their own work, and on the last day of school, each child was able to select a class big book to take home with them to remember their time in Kindergarten.