The backpack is packed and standing by the door, and it looks enormous. Bigger than the small person who has to carry it. That is the picture of the night before the first day: everything ready, nothing certain, a tummy full of butterflies that will not settle.
You cannot color away a first day. What you can do is make the big, unfamiliar things small enough to hold. A backpack you have already filled in with your own favorite colors is less of a stranger the next morning. So is a bus, a door, a lunchbox. Print a few of these, sit down together the week before, and let the day get rehearsed one crayon at a time.
The backpack that is bigger than you are
Every first-day backpack looks a size too big. That is part of the ritual. It is also the one thing on this whole nervous morning that a child gets to decide: what goes inside it, and what it looks like. Let them color the straps electric blue and the front pocket lime green. Give the zipper pull a little face. By the time the real backpack is on their shoulders, they have already met it on paper.
The bus with the wide yellow doors
The bus is loud and tall and full of bigger kids, and it pulls away with your child inside it. Of course it feels scary. What helps is knowing it is the same bus every day, the same seat, the same driver who learns your name by Friday. So color the bus first. Count its windows. Decide which one is your window. A thing you have studied on paper is a thing you can find again in real life.
Coloring fun for kids — anywhere.
Free for iOS & Android. No ads, no sign-up, offline-ready.
Coloring fun for kids — anywhere.
Free coloring app for kids. iOS and Android, phones and tablets. No ads, no sign-up, even offline.
The classroom door
The classroom door is the last unknown before the day really begins. Behind it are new faces, a teacher nobody has met yet, a room arranged by a stranger. Behind it is also a peg with your child's name already on it, a chair that is now theirs, and a wall waiting for the first drawing to go up. Color the door standing open. Put something friendly on the other side of it.
The lunchbox and the sharpened pencils
Not everything about the first day is enormous. Some of it is small and yours: a lunchbox packed with something from home, a pencil case that snaps shut, a row of pencils sharpened to perfect points. These are the anchors. When the morning feels too big, a child can reach into the bag and find a familiar thing waiting. Color the lunchbox with lunch already inside. Color every pencil a different shade, because tomorrow they will all be the same gray lead.
What else could you color?
Pick a prompt or type your own — opens in a new tab.
Print the first day before it comes
Here is the whole set: the backpack, the bus, the door, the lunchbox, and the small brave things in between. Print a handful, spread them across the kitchen table the week before school starts, and color the big morning down to a size that fits in two small hands.
