How do you add items to dockerignore

Question

There aren't many examples of what a.dockerignore file should look like that I can discover.

When you use puppet to install a few packages on a docker container, the image grows from 600MB to 3GB in size. I'm trying to keep the size down by using a.dockerignore file.

$ cat Dockerfile  
FROM centos:centos6

#Work around selinux problem on cent images
RUN yum install -y --enablerepo=centosplus libselinux-devel

RUN yum install -y wget git tar openssh-server; yum -y clean all

Add Puppetfile / 
RUN librarian-puppet install
RUN puppet apply --modulepath=/modules -e "class { 'buildslave': jenkins_slave => true,}"
RUN librarian-puppet clean

When I run docker images --tree I can see that the image constantly increasing by multiple of GBs

$ docker images --tree
                ├─e289570b5555 Virtual Size: 387.7 MB
                │ └─a7646acf90d0 Virtual Size: 442.5 MB
                │   └─d7bc6e1fbe43 Virtual Size: 442.5 MB
                │     └─772e6b204e3b Virtual Size: 627.5 MB
                │       └─599a7b5226f4 Virtual Size: 627.5 MB
                │         └─9fbffccda8bd Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │           └─ee46af013f6b Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │             └─3e4fe065fd07 Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │               └─de9ec3eba39e Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │                 └─31cba2716a12 Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │                   └─52cbc742d3c4 Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │                     └─9a857380258c Virtual Size: 2.943 GB
                │                       └─c6d87a343807 Virtual Size: 2.964 GB
                │                         └─f664124e0080 Virtual Size: 2.964 GB
                │                           └─e6cc212038b9 Virtual Size: 2.964 GB Tags: foo/jenkins-centos6-buildslave:latest

The image grows so enormous, I suppose, because librarian-puppet clones a puppet module to /modules, breaking the build cache.

I've tried using dockerignore files but haven't had any luck.

$ cat .dockerignore
/modules
/modules/
/modules/*

Is this the proper way to write a.dockerignore file?
Is there anything else I can do to keep these containers from getting so big?