School Coloring Pages

A school is a whole little world, and every child knows its corners: the lockers, the lunch tray, the hamster cage at the back of the classroom, the stairs where someone always sits to read. These school coloring pages walk through a school day from the bus stop to the last bell, and they are as useful for a teacher's first week as for a child who is a little nervous about starting.

The day begins outside, with a school bus parked under a maple tree, a crossing guard holding up the stop paddle at the crosswalk, a bike rack full of bicycles and a girl with a satchel waving on an autumn path on her first day of school. Inside, there is a row of tall lockers, satchels and a scarf on the coat hooks, a backpack hanging on its hook, children lining up at the water fountain and a janitor mopping the hallway. The classroom has its chalkboard with a sunflower drawing, a child sorting pencils into a tin cup at a desk, a globe beside a stack of books, a child holding an apple up to the window, a cat asleep on a pile of notebooks on the teacher's desk, the classroom hamster on its wheel and a child feeding the goldfish.

The special rooms get their own pages: the upright piano in the music room, an easel with a sailboat painting and the paint-splashed sink of the art room, a science bench with a flask and test tubes, a science fair table with a model volcano, the library cart between tall shelves, a child climbing the rope in the gym, the lunch tray in the cafeteria and the school stage with its microphone. Then comes recess and the outdoors: two children skipping rope, two playing chess, a rainy playground full of puddles, a snowball fight in the schoolyard, children planting carrots and lettuces in the school garden and a child carrying seedlings in the greenhouse. For older children and adults there is a mandala made of pencils, a pencil and eraser border, a child reading curled up under the stairs and a class photo on the steps.

Pages for the first day of school

Coloring is one of the gentlest ways to start a school year. In the first days, a page of the school bus, the lockers or the classroom helps children name the places they are about to discover, and it gives a quiet activity while the teacher welcomes the class one by one. At home, coloring the first day of school page together is a good moment to talk about what will happen: who will be there, where the backpack goes, what lunch looks like. The pencil border makes a simple frame for a first drawing or a name, written by the child in the middle.

Talking about school while coloring

Each page is a question waiting to be asked. Who helps us cross the road? What would you plant in the school garden? What would you show at the science fair? Which is your favorite room: the library, the gym or the art room? Younger children can point and name, older ones can tell a story about the picture, and a class can color the rooms of their own school and put them together in a map on the wall.

Classic school colors

• The school bus is the famous school bus yellow, with black stripes and red stop lights.
• An apple for the teacher is shiny red, and the chalkboard is dark green or black.
• Maple leaves turn orange, red and gold in the back to school season.
• Lockers, backpacks and the classroom can be every color of the rainbow, just like a real school.

Quick pages and busy rooms

The backpack, the globe, the hamster and the single children are simple enough for preschoolers. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Row of School Lockers
• Cafeteria Lunch Tray
• Science Fair Volcano and Stones

The library, the bike rack, the garden and the pencil mandala are full of detail for older kids. Lots of detail begins with:

• Pencil Mandala
• Library Cart Between the Shelves
• Bike Rack Full of Bicycles

Printing

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 nothing is cut off. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack prints a whole school week at once, and the sheets are free to copy for a class. Pages to thank the grown-ups are in the teacher coloring pages, more school things in the backpack coloring pages and the apple coloring pages, and pages for the youngest in the preschool coloring pages.