Pencils!

Okay here is a super random topic... PENCILS!!

I had this one classroom long ago that had one of those old fashioned pencil sharpeners that was bolted to the counter! It has a dial so you can choose your pencil size and then you had to crank the handle! If you know what I'm talking about, then you must be ancient like me!! Hehehe!

Anyways, this thing is loud, makes a mess and pretty much chews up your pencil if you don't use it properly. The kids were naturally OBSESSED with it! It became so disruptive that I pretty much banned it and made them use a regular pencil sharpener if they needed to sharpen their pencils. That plan didn't work out too well either because I figured out that most of the kids just pretended to sharpen their pencil so they could get out of their desks and not have to do work. Soon the pencil sharpening area was the hottest place in town and all the kiddos wanted to hang out there! It was pretty much like the water cooler at work where people gather to chit chat and be unproductive. It was driving me nuts!!!

So I had to come up with a super aggressive plan!! I collected ALL their pencils... even the new ones from the school supplies that parents sent at the beginning of the school year! I sharpened a whole jar of pencils and made a "communal" pencil jar! If you needed a pencil you could take one. If your pencil needed to be sharpened then you would have to place your pencil in the "need to be sharpened" jar and take a sharpened pencil. This plan worked GREAT and productivity increased and pencil sharpening related distractions decreased dramatically! The only problem with my super awesome plan was I was spending a good 10 mins+ sharpening pencils at the end of everyday! AIYAH!

Anyways, since I was spending so much time sharpening pencils I became quite the pencil connoisseur! The dollar store pencils are CRAP! Do not buy your kids pencils from the dollarstore! They do not sharpen well and always break or the lead isn't perfectly centered. So which pencil should you be buying? Well, there was ONE pencil that was for sure my pencil of choice. I saw it the other day at Walmart and it caught my eye and made me reminisce about my good ol' pencil sharpening days... hence this super awesome random post about pencils! It is called the MIRADO!

This pencil writes ultra smooth and sharpens like a gem! It's also only 2 bucks for a pack so not expensive at all! It's black, so super easy to spot among the sea of different pencils! So next time you are school supply shopping, do your kiddos (or their teacher) a favour and buy them THIS pencil!!