Back to School Pencils Books Coloring Page: Free PDF

School Supplies History and Pencil Facts

The Pencil: Five Centuries of Writing

The modern pencil traces its origins to 1565 in Borrowdale, England, where a large deposit of graphite was discovered in a mine. Early graphite sticks were fragile and messy, so they were wrapped in sheepskin or wooden holders — the ancestor of today's wood-cased pencil. The name "pencil" comes from the Latin penicillus, meaning "little tail," which was the word for the small brush used by scribes before graphite came into use. By the 18th century, pencil manufacturing had spread to Germany and France, with Nicolas-Jacques Conté developing the clay-mixed graphite rod process in 1795 that still forms the basis of pencil production today.

What Makes a Number 2 Pencil?

Pencil hardness is rated on a scale where H indicates hardness (less graphite, lighter marks) and B indicates blackness (more graphite, darker, softer marks). The No. 2 pencil used in American schools corresponds to HB on the international scale — the midpoint that balances mark darkness with durability. HB pencils became the standard for standardized testing in the United States in the 1930s because early optical mark recognition machines could read their marks reliably. Today's standardized tests still specify No. 2 pencils for the same reason, even though modern scanners can read lighter marks without difficulty.

The Textbook: From Scroll to Backpack

The first printed textbooks appeared in Europe shortly after Gutenberg's printing press was developed around 1450. Before that, students in medieval universities wrote their own notes from teacher dictation because hand-copied books were too expensive for most individuals to own. The first dedicated school textbooks in the modern sense were hornbooks — flat wooden paddles with the alphabet, numbers, and the Lord's Prayer printed on a sheet protected by a thin layer of cow horn — used widely in England and colonial America from the 1400s through the early 1800s. The ruler-bounded textbook familiar today, with chapter divisions, illustrations, and exercises, emerged in the 19th century as public education systems standardized their curricula across grade levels.

The Teacher's Apple: Where the Tradition Started

The tradition of students giving apples to teachers dates back to 16th-century Scandinavia and Denmark, where rural families who could not afford to pay cash for their children's schooling gave food instead — grain, vegetables, and fruit. Apples were a practical and storable gift in areas where orchards were common. The tradition crossed to colonial America where one-room schoolhouses in farming communities relied on community donations to sustain teachers' salaries. By the 19th century the teacher-and-apple image had become a cultural fixture in American schooling, appearing in illustrations, poems, and later in cartoons and classroom decorations. Today the red apple on a teacher's desk is recognized globally as a symbol of education and gratitude.

The Backpack and Modern School Supplies

Before the backpack became the universal student carryall, children used leather satchels, cloth bags, and simple strapped book carriers. The modern zippered backpack was popularized in American schools during the 1980s, largely because it distributed book weight across both shoulders rather than straining one side. Studies in pediatric orthopedics showed that improperly loaded backpacks contributed to posture problems in children, leading to recommendations that a loaded school backpack should not exceed 10 to 15 percent of a child's body weight. Today the school backpack is the most recognizable back-to-school supply symbol alongside pencils and notebooks, appearing on everything from first-day-of-school photos to classroom coloring pages.