Backpack Coloring Pages

A backpack goes everywhere its owner goes, which makes it a surprisingly good subject for a coloring page: every drawing is also a place. These backpack coloring pages follow school bags and hiking packs through a whole year, from the first morning of school to a rope bridge over a gorge.

The school pages start at the lockers, where a backpack waits with a water bottle in its side pocket. Others hang from a coat hook above a bench, lean on a chair between classroom desks, rest against the library shelves beside a tall stack of books, and sit on a bench at the bus stop with two umbrellas on the ground. One is open to show everything in its place, pencils, pens, an eraser and a sharpener, another is stuffed with rolled paper and paintbrushes, and one has its straps wrapped in braided friendship bracelets. A cat-face backpack, a backpack covered in sewn-on patches and a bear cub wearing a tiny teddy bear backpack are the cutest of the set.

The outdoor pages take the bag on an adventure. A big hiking pack with a sleeping mat leans against the rocks, a camping pack carries a kettle and a lantern in front of the mountains, and a climber's pack sits on a ledge under a coil of rope. A girl walks a forest path, another waves at the ducks on a pond, and a hiker crosses a rope bridge with a walking pole. There is a picnic spilling out of a backpack onto a checkered blanket, a backpack on a log beside a pair of muddy boots, one inside a tent with socks and a compass laid out, one on a bicycle by an ivy-covered fence, one on a treehouse ladder and one in an oak tree while a squirrel investigates the pocket. The seasons pass too: a backpack under an umbrella in the rain, one in a pile of autumn leaves with a thermos, one on a snowy bench with mittens tucked in the top, and one hanging from a beach chair beside a sun hat and flip flops. At home, a cat sleeps on top of a backpack and another is being packed on the bed for a trip. A puppy peeks out of the backpack on someone's back, a bag rides the luggage rack of a train, and a mandala and a border of backpacks and leaves finish the collection.

A page for the first day of school

The school pages make a gentle way to talk about what is coming. Before the first day, a child can color the backpack they will carry, in the colors of their own bag or the one they wish they had, and talk about what will go inside it. The locker page, the classroom page and the bus stop page each open a small conversation: where will you hang your bag, where will you sit, who will you wait with. For a child who is nervous, drawing the familiar object in the new place helps the place feel less new.

The same pages work at the end of the year, as a record: color the backpack that came home with scuffs, patches and a broken zipper, and write the year on the back.

Coloring a backpack that looks real

A backpack is mostly fabric, and fabric looks right when it is not quite flat. A few easy tricks:

• Pick one main color and one accent. Most real bags are a single color with straps, zippers or pockets in a second. Navy with red, green with gray, pink with purple.
• Make the pockets slightly darker. A front pocket sits in the shadow of the bag above it; press a little harder on its top edge.
• Leave the mesh pocket light. The side mesh on the school bags looks best in a pale version of the main color, with the water bottle colored inside it.
• Metal is gray, not black. Buckles, zippers and carabiners look like metal in light gray with a white spot left for the shine.

The patches page is where a child can go wild: every badge can be a different color, the way real sew-on patches are.

Simple bags and busy scenes

The easiest pages are the ones where the backpack fills the page, like the cat-face backpack and the patch backpack. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Puppy in the backpack
• Bear with a teddy backpack
• Cat face backpack

The detailed ones hide the bag in a busy place, a classroom, a forest, a pile of leaves. Lots of detail begins with:

• Backpack on the bike
• Climber's pack
• Ready to camp

A lighter backpack

Doctors who look after children's backs often suggest keeping a loaded school bag under about a tenth to a fifth of the child's own weight, worn on both shoulders with the straps tight enough that the bag sits high. The open backpack page, with its pencils each in their own slot, is a good one to color before sorting a real bag: what really needs to go in, and what can stay at home? It turns a chore into a small game, and the lightest bag wins.

Printing for the school year

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so every strap and buckle stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack gathers a week of pages into one file for the first days of school. More school pages are in the teacher coloring pages, the letter coloring pages and the preschool coloring pages, and more trail adventures in the camping coloring pages.