Sharpen those pencils, pack the backpack, and get ready for a brand-new school year with our back-to-school coloring pages! This cheerful collection celebrates everything that makes returning to school exciting, from seeing friends again and traveling to school to filling backpacks with fresh supplies and getting ready for new things to learn.
The collection includes children riding their bicycles to school, a schoolboy and schoolgirl heading back together, a creative arrangement of school supplies with autumn details, and a backpack packed with classroom essentials.
Whether children are starting preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, or another new year of learning, these printables make an easy activity for those exciting days before and after school begins.
Grab your crayons, markers, or colored pencils and make the new school year a colorful one.
🎒 Explore Our Back-to-School Coloring Pages
Going back to school involves lots of little things that children recognize immediately: backpacks, pencils, notebooks, rulers, erasers, books, bicycles, school buildings, classmates, and all the excitement of a fresh start.
The four designs in this collection capture several different parts of that experience.
One page shows children riding their bikes toward school, while another celebrates friendship with a schoolboy and schoolgirl returning together. The school-supply illustrations offer lots of smaller details to color, from pencils and notebooks to a backpack ready for the classroom.
Kids can use realistic colors or create a school world filled with rainbow backpacks, purple pencils, patterned notebooks, and bright autumn leaves.
For more printables that combine creativity and learning, explore our Educational Coloring Pages & Activities.
🚲 Color the Bike Ride to School
One of the most lively pictures in the collection shows children riding their bicycles to school.
This page provides plenty of opportunities to use bright colors. Each bicycle can have its own personality, from classic red or blue to turquoise, pink, lime green, orange, or rainbow colors.
Try coordinating each child’s backpack with their bicycle, or deliberately make everything different.
You can also imagine what the trip to school looks like around them. Add trees, houses, sidewalks, flowers, street signs, clouds, or a school building in the distance.
If the scene takes place in early September, keep plenty of leaves green but add a few touches of yellow and orange to hint that fall is coming.
🏫 Draw the School at the End of the Road
Once the bicycles are colored, extend the picture by drawing the children’s destination.
What does their school look like?
It might be a large brick building with rows of windows, a small neighborhood school, or an imaginary school with colorful doors and a giant playground.
Add:
- A flagpole
- School buses
- Trees
- A playground
- A welcome sign
- Students arriving
- A bike rack
- Sidewalks
- Flower beds
Write the name of an imaginary school above the entrance.
Children could even name it after their favorite animal, color, place, or fictional character.
🧑🤝🧑 Back to School With Friends
Another page shows a schoolboy and schoolgirl returning to school together.
Seeing familiar classmates can be one of the nicest parts of the beginning of a new school year. Children may reconnect with old friends while also meeting new classmates and teachers.
Use different colors for the children’s clothing, shoes, backpacks, and school supplies. Kids can try to make the characters resemble themselves and a friend or simply invent two completely new students.
Then imagine what they are talking about.
Maybe they are comparing new backpacks, wondering who their teacher will be, talking about summer vacation, or deciding where they will sit at lunch.
The picture can easily become the beginning of a story.
💬 Add a First-Day Conversation
Turn the friendship picture into a mini comic.
Draw speech bubbles above the children and imagine what they might say.
For example:
“I’m excited for art class!”
“Let’s sit together at lunch.”
“I wonder what we’re learning today.”
“I got new pencils!”
“Did you have a good summer?”
Older children can write their own conversation, while younger children can dictate what they think the characters are saying.
It is a simple way to combine coloring with imagination and writing.
🎒 Design the Perfect School Backpack
The backpack-and-school-supplies page offers one of the best opportunities for creative color.
A backpack doesn’t need to be plain.
Turn it into something completely personal with:
- Polka dots
- Stripes
- Stars
- Hearts
- Rainbows
- Dinosaurs
- Flowers
- Animals
- Lightning bolts
- Space designs
Kids can imagine that they are designing the backpack they would most like to take to school.
Would it be purple with stars? Blue with sharks? Pink with cats? Green with dinosaurs?
There is no wrong answer.
✏️ What’s Inside the Backpack?
Once the backpack is colored, imagine what belongs inside it.
A school backpack might contain:
- Pencils
- Crayons
- Notebooks
- Folders
- Books
- Erasers
- A ruler
- Glue
- Scissors
- A pencil case
- Lunch
- A water bottle
Children can draw extra school supplies around the picture or make a separate What’s in My Backpack? drawing.
Older kids could create a checklist for the first day of school and check off everything they need.
🌈 Make Rainbow School Supplies
School supplies are perfect for rainbow coloring because there are so many individual objects.
Try assigning one color to each item.
A pencil could be red.
A notebook might be orange.
Make the ruler yellow, the eraser green, the pencil case blue, and the backpack purple.
Or color an entire set of pencils in rainbow order:
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
There is no reason school supplies have to match what you see in a store. A coloring page is a great place to invent the most colorful classroom imaginable.
🖍️ Create Your Dream Pencil Case
If you could have a pencil case filled with absolutely any art supplies, what would you choose?
Imagine one packed with:
- Colored pencils
- Markers
- Gel pens
- Crayons
- Mechanical pencils
- Glitter pens
- Highlighters
- Stickers
Draw your dream pencil case beside the existing school supplies.
Then decorate it with your favorite colors and patterns.
This can be an especially fun activity for children who love art almost as much as they love fresh school supplies.
📚 Give Every Book a Title
Books appear naturally in back-to-school artwork, but you don’t have to leave their covers blank.
Invent titles for them.
Maybe the stack includes:
Amazing Dinosaur Adventures
Animals Around the World
The Mystery of the Missing Pencil
My Big Book of Space
101 Amazing Ocean Creatures
The Secret School Library
Children can write tiny titles on the covers or simply decorate each book with symbols that suggest what it might contain.
A dinosaur could go on one cover, a planet on another, and a cat on a third.
🔤 Add Alphabet Fun
Back-to-school season is a natural time to practice letters.
Younger children can add their initials to a backpack, notebook, or pencil case. They can also write the first letter of their name somewhere in the picture.
If a child’s name begins with M, for example, draw a large M beside the school supplies and decorate it with patterns.
You can continue the activity with our Coloring Pages of Letters, which provide printable designs for all 26 letters of the alphabet.
Children can color the letters in their name and display them together.
🔢 Add Some Number Practice
Numbers fit naturally into the classroom theme too.
Write numbers on notebooks, lockers, classroom doors, or pretend worksheets in the background.
Younger children can practice counting the objects in the picture.
How many pencils can you find?
How many books?
How many wheels are on the bicycles?
How many children?
For more early math coloring, visit our Coloring Pages with Numbers.
🍎 Add Classic School Details
Want to make the picture feel even more like the first day of school?
Add a few familiar school symbols around the page.
Draw:
- An apple
- A chalkboard
- A globe
- A school bell
- A ruler
- ABC letters
- Numbers
- A lunchbox
- A school bus
- A stack of books
Younger children can keep the drawings very simple. Even a small red apple or yellow school bus immediately adds to the back-to-school theme.
🚌 Draw a School Bus
The bicycle picture could easily be expanded to include another familiar way children travel to school.
Draw a yellow school bus in the background.
Add windows, wheels, headlights, and a stop sign.
Then decide who is riding inside.
Kids could draw little faces in each window or create an entire second picture showing students riding the bus on their first day.
🍂 Add Early Fall Colors
Back-to-school season often overlaps with the transition from summer into fall, especially in September.
The school-supply artwork already lends itself nicely to autumn shades.
Try adding:
- Golden yellow
- Orange
- Rust
- Red
- Burgundy
- Olive green
- Brown
Keep some leaves green and gradually introduce warmer colors around them.
That mix gives the picture an early-September feeling rather than making it look like late autumn.
Our September Coloring Page is a perfect companion, featuring a wise owl surrounded by books, pencils, and fall leaves.
🦉 Pair It With the September Owl
The September owl page and these back-to-school designs naturally belong together.
Print both for a simple beginning-of-the-school-year activity.
Children can color the owl first and then create a matching palette for the backpack, books, pencils, and school scenes.
Maybe both pictures use warm orange, gold, green, and brown.
Or create a completely different theme with turquoise, purple, pink, and yellow.
Display the finished pages together for an easy September classroom or homeschool decoration.
🍁 Continue Into Fall Coloring
As September moves along, back-to-school themes begin blending naturally with autumn.
Leaves change color, temperatures cool, pumpkins begin appearing, and school routines settle into place.
Continue the seasonal theme with our Fall Coloring Pages or browse our larger Seasonal Coloring Pages collection.
Kids can follow the school year as the seasons change from fall to winter, spring, and eventually summer again.
📅 Make a First-Day-of-School Keepsake
A coloring page can become a simple record of the beginning of the year.
After the child finishes coloring, add:
My First Day of School
Then write:
- Name
- Age
- Grade
- Teacher
- School
- Date
- Favorite subject
- Favorite book
- Favorite color
- What I want to learn this year
Save the page in a scrapbook or memory box.
If you repeat the activity each year, it becomes a fun record of how the child’s interests, handwriting, and coloring change over time.
📸 Add a First-Day Photo
Pair the finished coloring page with a first-day-of-school photograph.
Place both on a sheet of cardstock or scrapbook paper and add the child’s name, grade, and school year.
Kids can decorate the border with tiny pencils, books, apples, stars, or ABCs.
The result becomes an easy back-to-school scrapbook page without requiring an elaborate craft project.
✏️ Write About the First Day
These coloring sheets can also become simple writing prompts.
Try:
On my first day of school, I hope…
This year I want to learn…
My favorite thing about school is…
One thing I’m excited about is…
A good friend is someone who…
If I designed my own classroom…
Younger children can answer aloud.
Older students can write a paragraph and place the finished coloring page beside it.
🌟 Set a School-Year Goal
A new school year feels like a fresh beginning, making it a natural time for children to choose one simple goal.
It doesn’t need to be about grades.
A child might want to:
- Read more books
- Learn multiplication facts
- Improve handwriting
- Make a new friend
- Remember homework
- Practice an instrument
- Ask more questions
- Try a new activity
- Be kinder to classmates
- Keep their desk organized
Write the goal underneath the finished picture and display it somewhere visible.
😊 Talk About First-Day Feelings
The start of a school year can bring lots of different emotions.
Some children feel excited.
Others may feel curious, shy, nervous, impatient, or a mixture of everything at once.
Use the coloring page as an easy conversation starter.
Ask:
“What are you most excited about?”
“Is there anything you’re wondering about?”
“What was your favorite part of school last year?”
“What would make the first day feel easier?”
There doesn’t need to be a right answer. Sometimes coloring while talking makes the conversation feel relaxed and natural.
🏫 Imagine Your Dream Classroom
What if children could design their own classroom?
After finishing the coloring page, ask them to draw it.
Would it have regular desks or giant beanbag chairs?
A huge library?
An art table?
Plants everywhere?
A class pet?
A reading fort?
A giant world map?
Maybe there would be an outdoor classroom, a science laboratory, or a wall where students could display their artwork.
Kids can label different parts of the room and explain why they included them.
📚 Design a Classroom Library
Books are already part of the back-to-school theme, so why not invent a classroom library?
Draw a bookshelf and fill it with tiny colorful books.
Organize them by imaginary categories such as:
- Animals
- Space
- Dinosaurs
- Fairy tales
- Oceans
- Science
- Adventures
- Funny stories
Children can also write down three books they hope to read during the school year.
The finished page could become the cover for a personal reading log.
📖 Start a Back-to-School Reading Log
Choose one coloring page and write My Reading Log across the top after coloring.
Then attach several sheets of paper where children can record the books they read.
Each entry might include:
- Book title
- Author
- Date finished
- Favorite character
- A star rating
Younger children can simply color one star for each book they read with an adult.
By the end of the month, the back-to-school picture becomes the cover of a personalized reading record.
✂️ Turn Finished Pages Into Classroom Decorations
Once the pictures are colored, they can be used for more than refrigerator art.
Turn them into:
- Bulletin-board decorations
- Locker decorations
- Notebook covers
- Reading-log covers
- Classroom signs
- First-day keepsakes
- Folder covers
- Name tags
- September displays
A teacher could give every student the same page and then display all the different versions together.
The variety of colors makes a cheerful classroom display while showing how differently everyone approaches the same design.
🏫 Back-to-School Coloring Pages for Teachers
These printables can fit easily into the first days of school because they require little preparation.
Teachers might use them for:
- Morning work
- Early finishers
- Art centers
- Quiet time
- Indoor recess
- Meet-the-teacher events
- First-week activities
- Classroom displays
They can also be paired with introductions.
After coloring, students could write their name and three favorite things underneath the picture.
Display the pages together to help classmates learn a little more about one another.
🏠 Back-to-School Coloring at Home
Parents can use the pages during the days leading up to school as a relaxed way to build excitement.
Set out crayons and printables while organizing supplies or labeling notebooks.
Kids could color a backpack page and then pack their real backpack.
Color pencils on the page and then check the pencil case.
Color books and then choose a favorite book to read before bed.
Turning preparation into a creative activity can make the evening before school feel a little more special.
🎒 Create a Backpack Checklist
After coloring the backpack page, use it as the cover for a simple checklist.
Depending on the child’s school and age, the list might include:
- Backpack
- Folder
- Notebook
- Pencils
- Pencil case
- Lunch
- Water bottle
- Homework
- Library book
Keep the checklist near the door or backpack area.
Children can help check the list each evening or morning until the school routine becomes familiar.
🌙 Get Ready the Night Before
The evening before school can feel busy, especially at the beginning of the year.
A simple routine can help make mornings smoother.
Children can help:
Pack the backpack.
Choose clothes.
Put shoes in the right place.
Check school papers.
Prepare anything they need to bring.
Then finish the evening with something calm, perhaps reading a book or coloring one of these pages.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends easing children back into consistent school-year routines before classes begin, including regular sleep schedules.
🚶 Talk About Getting to School Safely
Because one of the coloring pages shows children riding bicycles, it can also open a conversation about the trip to school.
Families can talk about the route children actually use, whether they walk, bike, ride a bus, or travel with an adult.
Young children should follow the transportation and safety rules appropriate for their age, school, and community.
The picture can become a simple prompt:
How does the child in the picture get to school?
How do you get there?
What landmarks do you pass?
Where is the school entrance?
This turns the artwork into a conversation about a familiar daily routine.
🌈 Back-to-School Coloring for Preschoolers
Younger children do not need complicated instructions to enjoy these pages.
Let preschoolers focus on identifying familiar objects.
Ask:
“Can you find the backpack?”
“Where are the pencils?”
“Can you point to a book?”
“What color should the bicycle be?”
“What would you put in your backpack?”
For even more age-friendly options, explore our Preschool Coloring Pages.
🧠 Continue Learning Through Coloring
Back-to-school season is an ideal time to explore the site’s larger collection of learning printables.
Our Educational Coloring Pages & Activities bring together letters, numbers, maps, animals, seasons, and other early-learning themes.
Children can move from coloring a school backpack to practicing letters, counting pictures, exploring maps, or discovering animals and nature.
Coloring can remain part of the routine even after the excitement of the first week of school has passed.
🖍️ Best Supplies for Back-to-School Coloring
Crayons are an easy choice for younger children and work particularly well for larger objects such as backpacks, bicycles, and clothing.
Colored pencils are useful for smaller school supplies and patterns. They also make it easier to layer several colors together.
Markers create especially bold backpacks, books, and pencils, although heavier paper may be helpful if the ink tends to bleed through regular printer paper.
Children can also use gel pens, stickers, or metallic markers to add extra details after the main coloring is complete.
🖨️ How to Use These Back-to-School Coloring Pages
Choose your favorite design and print the coloring page you’d like to use.
Regular printer paper is perfect for crayons and colored pencils, while slightly heavier paper can work well for markers or pages that will become crafts.
Then make the picture personal.
Give the backpack your favorite pattern.
Color a bicycle in your favorite shade.
Write your name on a notebook.
Add your school in the background.
Draw a friend walking beside you.
The illustrations provide the beginning of the story, but children get to decide what happens next.
🎉 Start the School Year With Color
A new school year brings fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, packed backpacks, familiar friends, new classmates, and countless things still waiting to be discovered.
These free printable back-to-school coloring pages celebrate that fresh-start feeling through bicycles, students, school supplies, backpacks, and plenty of opportunities for imagination.
Use them during the days before school, as a first-week classroom activity, for a September display, or simply whenever children are excited about learning.
Grab the crayons, pack the backpack, and color your way into a brand-new school year.
🔗 Related Articles
- September Coloring Page
- Educational Coloring Pages & Activities
- Coloring Pages of Letters
- Coloring Pages with Numbers
- Preschool Coloring Pages
- Seasonal Coloring Pages
- Fall Coloring Pages
- Cute Coloring Pages
📚 Sources
- American Academy of Pediatrics — Back-to-School Tips for Families
- CDC — Back to School
- CDC — Tips to Support Healthy Routines for Children and Teens
