August Book Of The Month

An Old Favorite:

Mary wore a red dress, back to school ideas, back to school books. I chose Mary Wore A Red Dress for this month’s book pick, because young children enjoy it.

It’s one of those “Read it again; read it again!” stories.

Learning colors is one of my report card standards and having color words as part of the word wall and doing a variety of things with colors, is a big part of most teacher’s back-to-school activities, so I thought this was a good choice to dream up some activities for you to do with your students.

The Gist: Why I Love it:

Mary Wore A Red Dress is an old Texas folk song. I love it because it provides the perfect Segway to the introduction of colors.

In this particular version, animals are on their way to a birthday party. I also like that the author includes the music at the end of the story.

Story Telling Tips:

Use the colored clothing pieces that I have made to match the story and pass them out to students. This is the perfect “sequencing” story.
When the “orange” shirt is read, the child who has the orange shirt piece adds it to the flannel or white board.

After reading the story, mix up the pieces and see if the children can remember the order they came in.
Substitute students’ names for character names. Watch little ones’ eyes light up when you say their name. “Am I really in the book?” They’ll ask. It gets them to really pay attention.

I say the colors in English as well as Spanish and have the children repeat them back to me.
Another thing you can have students do is to stand up if they are wearing the color that is being talked about in the story. i.e., Mary is wearing a red dress.

If you’re also wearing red, stand up.
Children can wiggle their fingers, touch their nose, take a bow or do something silly, point to that color and then sit down.

Magic Tricks: I use my change bag to produce different colored scarves to teach secondary colors. “What color was Mary wearing?” Yes, red. Did you know that red and yellow make orange?”

I put a red scarf and a yellow scarf in the change bag and have children exclaim:

“ _______________ wore an orange shirt!” Then I pop out an orange scarf. I do the same thing when I produce a green scarf (blue + yellow) and a purple scarf (red + blue).

If I have time, I let students smear what ever primary color combination they want together, to turn a white paper tee-shirt into a secondary color. I then hang these on a clothesline with mini clothespins.

$Mary wore a red dress, math ideas, back to school ideas,$ Math: 5 graphing extensions, connect the dots, & count how many and write the number skill sheet.

Writing Extensions: 2 Class books: We Wore __________ To School! and On the First Day Of School Who Did You See?

Art Activity: (T-shirt idea above.) Click on the link for a copy of a t-shirt to paint.

Language Arts: Trace to pre-write skill sheet, matching colors, alphabetical order, rhyming words.

Mary wore a red dress, back to school ideas, writing prompts, ideas for class books, writing class books. Click on the link to view/print the She Wore A Red Dress Packet. This packet will be FREE til September 16th and then can be purchased for only .99 cents.

Bibliography for Back-To-School: Click on the link to view my favorites.

Be sure and check out our FREEBIE reader of the month: Where Are The Coconuts? This is a great booklet to go along with any of your Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activities.

If you’re a big fan of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, be sure and check out the Arts-Crafts and Activities section. That is my major theme this month.

Our free "Easy Reader" this month is The Students On the Bus, a great math extension booklet and a real keepsake when you add a few photographs.

Whatever you're reading this month, I hope it's simply T-riffic! Happy August.