Back to school time isn’t just about shopping! (Not that there’s anything wrong with shopping, of course.) One of our favorite annual traditions is sharing our favorite back to school printables in our Back to School Guide to help make the school year easier, more organized, and just more fun. This year, we’re sharing 22 favorites, most of them free!

Psst…don’t forget some new pens and pencils to fill out all these printable calendars, color these doodle pages, and sign your kids’ lunch box notes!

Other Back to School Guide Posts:
– The coolest lunch box accessories, water bottles, and other goodies to make school lunch more fun
– 15 of the coolest backpacks for preschool and kindergarten
– 20 cool backpacks for teens this year
– Lunch bags and totes for teens who have outgrown lunch boxes
– Free printables for kindergarten: Sight word help, 12 ways for kindergarten and pre-k
– 7 creative time-saving hacks to save your back-to-school routine
– 13 dorm room essentials you might not have considered

Our Favorite Free Printables for Back to School

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Free Printable Lunch Box Notes and Cards

Free printable lunch notes by Tiny Me 

We’ve found tons of cute printable lunch box notes over the years, but Tiny Me, makers of some of our favorite custom lunch boxes and cool personalized backpacks for kids offers a nice selection of free printables from time to time, including these. Check their blog for plenty more options.

Free printable lunch box note tags by Our Best Bites

We also love the fun gift tag shape and the clean, modern design of these 8 free printable lunch box notes, which makes them a favorite around here that we love sharing every year around this time.

Free printable lunch box jokes by Handmade Charlotte

We admit we’re giggling at these cute jokes (some of which you may remember from your own childhood!) that you can pop in your kid’s lunch box to make the first few days a little more fun. Just scale them to size, print them, then cut and pop them in with the sandwiches.

Free printable fill-in-the-blank lunchbox notes by Good On Paper Design for 100 Layer Cakelet

For a totally different take, we named these notes from Good on Design among our 16 favorite free printable lunch box notes for kids years ago, and they’re still a favorite! Kids can color them in themselves, or you can go to town drawing silly faces, funny family portraits, or your kids’ favorite cartoon character to greet them before they dig into that sandwich.

Free printable optical illusion lunch box notes at Mr. Printable

We know our older kids will go nuts for these fun, trick-your-friends optical illusions cards. And hey, they get a little science lesson in there when you start talking about impossible shapes and peripheral drift patterns. (P.S. Dare you to try and stop staring at the spinning circles card.)

Free Printable Bookplates and Bookmarks for Kids

Free printable bookplates for kids by Orange You Lucky 

To customize your kids’ books or notebooks this set of four free printable bookplates from talented illustrator Helen Dardik are among our all-time favorites. How lucky we are that she’s made them available free of charge at her blog.

Free printable personalized bookplates for kids by Cindy Hopper for Alpha Mom 

We are so smitten with these adorable free printable bookplates, created by Cindy Hopper for Alpha Mom. The best part (besides the super cute woodland creatures) is that the downloadable file is easy to edit so you can type in your child’s own name. Or, leave it blank and let them write in their own names for a little extra handwriting practice.

Free printable back to school labels by Jamielyn of The Inspiration Board (formerly I Heart Naptime)

Another option are these cute, very simple labels you can use for any items at all–and for kids of any age at all. Her site comes complete with printable sheets of labels in different colors, and directions for which labels to use.

Free printable coloring bookmarks by Alice and Lois

If your kids are crafty, let them grab their favorite set of watercolor paints, watercolor brush pens, or classic Crayon colored pencils to decorate their own bookmarks. If it turns out really great, you can even have it laminated.

(Tip: it’s not a bad idea to invest in an affordable, small laminating machine like this one to preserve all your kids’ favorite artwork. It helps turn it into placemats too!)

Free printable space bookmarks at View from a Stepstool

If you have a STEM-loving kid, a future astronaut, or just a stargazer, we love these adorable color-your-own bookmarks from View from a Stepstool. She has full instructions on her site (note it may be slow to load but she has a google drive link to the bookmark template).

Don’t Miss: See more free printable bookmarks for kids here

Free Printables for Calendar Planning and Organization Help

Free printable weekly planner by Wild Olive

We found a free weekly planner courtesy of the talented Mollie Johanson of Wild Olive. This rainbow honeycomb design is available for printing absolutely free in a full page or half page size, which is so convenient.

Related: 10 cool printable chore charts to motivate kids of all ages to clean up. Even your toddlers.

Free printable calendar stickers for back to school by Brenda Ponnay for Alpha Mom

Whether you’re using a printable calendar or any wall calendar or date book at all, these free, kid-friendly printable stickers are so fun for getting it organized. Your children can add their own important dates, events, and vacation days from the first day of school to the last.

Free printable morning routine cards from Living Locurto

In our post featuring helpful tips to get kids to school on time, we discussed setting up some kind of morning routine list or chart that even young kids can follow. One simple way to get it going is with cool printable cards like these, which can be stuck to a magnetic board at eye level, then handed to you as they’re completed, or put into a basket by the front door.

Free Printables for Kids’ School Books and Supplies

Free printable binder cover coloring pages by U-Create Crafts

For older kids with required binders, one way they can make them their own is with doodles. Two different designs are available for free download, including more traditional back-to-school icons and then — our favorite — one with emojis, text-speak, high-tops and hearts.

Free printable school subject labels by Printables and Inspiration

Her site is the motherlode of free printables for back to school, but we like these free printable labels for spiral notebooks or folders, to help keep kids organized by subject. Look around — there are so many designs on her site, wow.

Free printable foreign language alphabet flash cards by Mr. Printables

If your kids are starting to learn French, German, Danish, Portuguese, or even tighten up their English, there are super cute sets for all of them at Mr. Printables that are perfect for learning some alphabet basics.

Free School Printables for Making Memories

Free first day of school printable signs by How Does She

In our post on 5 creative ways to capture a first day of school photo, we found these cute free printables that help you mark this year — or any year. Print them all and start an annual tradition if you haven’t already. (Free for subscribers.)

Another choice: These fun free printable first day of school signs by Elegance and Enchantment for Remodelaholic which are ready to print for every school year, preschool through 12th. Though good luck getting your high school senior to pose.

Free back to school party printables by Printabelle for Catch My Party

The beginning of the school year is cause for celebration for a lot of reasons, and if you’re planning a get together for classmates or new school friends, this free set has everything you need from invitations to treat toppers to a welcome sign for your front door. There are also non-party goodies, like the lunchbox notes shown here, and bookplates. For an extra $3 you can even have the designer customize it with your child’s name — but it might be cute to add a classroom name. Ms. Greiner’s 4th Grade class party, anyone?