Pencil Sharpening

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Home : 2004 : July : 26

Pencil Sharpening
By Kerry

Brooke - I like your idea about the happy can and the sad can. I used to have these and found that the sad can was usually empty of pencils, while the happy can was always miserably empty as well. So I stopped using
them. Using your rule about having to actually trade pencils, I'm going to give it another shot this year.
With regard to the pencil sharpening ... OMG ... this has been a huge problem for me since the beginning of time! There were days I wanted to throw the electric pencil sharpener OUT THE WINDOW!!!!! Thankfully the darn thing broke and I got to throw it out. Then I tried mechanical

pencils. That worked in a way ... but the problem, I found, with this solution, was that the kids got "punch happy," meaning, they punched the erasers all day long to make the lead appear, and before I knew it, they were asking for more lead! It got to the point where kids were asking for lead 2 or more times per day. It was truly ridiculous. We ended the year this way and I've been thinking about what I would do for this year. In addition to the mechanical pencils (they do have their pros), I'm going to have regular pencils, but kids need my permission to use the sharpener since I've found that many kids will sharpen either just for the point of sharpening (no pun intended) or because the pencil is a little bit dull, but not unreasonably so.