The last days of summer have a special taste: excitement for new desks and old friends, and a touch of beginning-of-things awe. Drawing is the loveliest bridge a child can cross from holiday mood to school mood — it makes the new year's tools familiar characters before they're touched, and turns vague anticipation into a tangible project on paper. In this lesson we draw the return's first heroine — the backpack — step by step, then summon the small supplies band, and open a real decoration workshop from which your child's notebook emerges with a cover unlike any other in class.
The School Backpack Step by Step: The Traveling Box of Secrets
The backpack is a simple structure despite its stature, and seven steps suffice:
1. Draw a wide rectangle with rounded corners in the middle of the page — slightly taller than wide, like a standing slice of toast. This is the backpack's body, and the rounded corners are the secret of its "softness" — backpacks own no sharp angles. 2. Above the top edge draw a thick arc like half a bracelet — the handle the backpack dangles from on its hook. 3. In the body's lower third draw a smaller rectangle, also round-cornered — the front pocket, home of small surprises. 4. Above the pocket draw a short horizontal line with a little ring dangling from its middle — the pocket's zipper with its metal tongue. 5. On the body's right and left, peek out two thin arcs — the tips of the shoulder straps hiding behind the backpack. 6. Sign the pocket with a drawing your child loves: a star, the cat from lesson twenty-one, or a mini rainbow — a backpack without a favorite drawing is like a shirt without color. 7. Color with two shades of the same color: light for the body, dark for the pocket and handle — instant depth, as we learned in the one-color-shades lesson.
The Small Supplies Band: Quick Sketches Before the Bell
Around the backpack the band gathers, each member drawn in a minute: the pencil is a long thin rectangle wearing a sharpened triangle and topped with a pink eraser cylinder. The book is two adjoining rectangles with a middle line, plus short horizontal lines on both pages for text — one big letter on the cover is welcome. The ruler is a long slender rectangle with small equal ticks along its edge like the teeth of a wide comb. And the morning clock is a circle with two hands — here the clock rule from our earliest lessons visits: a short hand for hours, a long one for minutes, and set them to the new wake-up time! Suggest your child draw the whole band around the backpack, gathered around their captain on the first morning.
And let's not forget the tastiest member: the lunchbox! A wide rectangle with rounded corners topped by a small arc handle — a miniature of the backpack itself — and on its face the child draws what they hope to find inside: an apple with its leaf, or a triangular sandwich peeking from its wrap. From the home fridge to the painting: ask "what goes in tomorrow's box?" and let the child draw it each evening — a drawn menu that makes even vegetables awaited friends.
The Notebook Cover Workshop: Your Artistic Signature on Your Year
Here drawing moves from paper into life: take a real notebook from the new year's stack and turn its cover into an identity painting. In the center the child writes their name in big decorated letters — every letter can become a creature, as we learned in the Arabic-letters drawing lesson. Around the name, a frame of alternating colored dots or one continuous zigzag. And in the four corners, four small drawings telling the notebook owner's identity: what they love to play, what they love to eat, their favorite place, and their big dream. A hand-drawn cover never gets lost among thirty identical notebooks — and a child carrying their artistic signature on their supplies walks into school with doubled confidence.
The Countdown: An Art Calendar for the Starting Week
Days before school starts, draw a grid of five big boxes — the first week's days — and in each box the child draws one thing they look forward to that day: a missed friend's face, the recess playground, the new reading book. At each school day's end they return, color that box, and add a small drawing of the day's actual best moment. This counter does two precious things: it turns school anticipation from vague worry into a list of awaited joys, and by week's end it produces a sweet artistic document of "my first week" — kept in the memory box or hung beside the thirty-day-challenge drawing if you completed it over the summer.
Quick Questions Before the Bell
My child is nervous about school and won't draw about it at all? Don't force the topic. Start with what they love, then let the backpack enter the painting as a "guest" beside their favorite hero — the familiar befriends the new. Decorate the cover with regular pens or special tools? Wooden colored pencils and markers are entirely enough, and the drawing-tools-by-age lesson guides you to the best fit. Their backpack drawing is "tilted"? Excellent! Real backpacks lean and slouch — what matters is the clear structure: body, pocket, handle.
The Bottom Line
A seven-step backpack with rounded corners and a signed pocket, a supplies band drawn in minutes, a notebook cover turned personal artistic signature, and a countdown converting anticipation into organized joy. Thus your child enters the school year with their drawings arriving ahead of them. A blessed return and a colorful school year — and the Rasm Kids course is the backpack's partner in every semester!
