I hate mechanical pencils. Most of the time, they write too light for me to see well. Most of the time, they just give the kids something to play with instead of doing their work. I much prefer wooden pencils that you have to sharpen. My problem, though, is finding a balance between inexpensive and quality. By quality I mean #2 pencils that sharpen well, where the lead is not off-center resulting in a wooden point, and the lead is strong enough not to be broken down inside the wood and slide out as soon as you've sharpened it. We've had tons of problems with PaperMate American and with Dixon yellow pencils this year. We've even found some that had no lead at all inside! What kind of pencils do you find satisfactory -- and does WalMart carry them??? It may sound like a stupid question, but it's an important one to us.
Ticonderoga are the best I've found. I like the tri-grip ones, because they encourage proper grip. I know teacher supply stores have them, but they can be pricey. We use mechanical pencils some, just because the regular pencils break constantly! Mechanical pencils have so little lead in them, that they don't last long.
I don't have a solution to your problem, because I LOVE mechanical pencils. Mainly because of the problems you mentioned. I recently bought the thick leaded style mechanical pencils and they are working fine for us. I think they are .9 mm. I used to have a problem with my son breaking the leads, but these seem to work much better.
Ticonderoga (did I spell that right??? LOL ) Because of Staples, I have 25 packs that I got for .01 each! For future watch those sales at the school year prep, at Staples you can get a Teacher Rewards card that gives you what school teachers get that time of year. Up to 25 of the offers which is GREAT. Anyway, I second the Ticonderoga pencils. i love them...
The nearest Staples - or for that matter, Office Max or Office Depot or teacher store - is about an hour away. Not always easy to get to....
We've had really good luck with Office Depot brand. I found big boxes of them on clearance for $1 one year and we're still using those.
We have alot of the same problems with the lead falling out and and breaking off. I like to buy pencils from the dollar spot at Target. They are usually character pencils but we like them and usually just put up with it. I do buy paper mate pencils and also pencils by jot are really good. We always have bazillions of pencils and they always need to be sharpened and never have found any that don't get broke off or any of the things that you mentioned.
Obviously, pencil points do break. That's not really the point. (no pun intended) What irks me is the ones that break off pretty far down like a quarter inch into the wood, then the lead slides out of the wood, so you sharpen it again, and it breaks again before you can even write with it, and again, and you've sharpened away half of a new pencil before you even get to write anything. Or the wood is so poor quality or cut wrong so that the sharpener is cutting across the grain wrong and there are little splinters all over the part that's below the paint - not hard ones that stick you but softer ones that just distract you. Or the lead is off-center.
We had problems with them too years ago so we switched to mechanical pencils and we love them. Now my kids use pens most of the time.
I know what you mean! If my kids have a mechanical all I hear is "click click click...snap....click click click snap". lol. but I would say that we have the CHEAPEST pencils known to man! I can't remember but one of the grandfather's bought us a TON (I mean, this was over 2 years ago and we're STILL using them~~ and my kids are the pencil bandits, they take them to their room to never be seen again!). So let me advise you... (had to go look)....these pencils are paper-mate! Go figure, I expected a cheapo brand, not paper-mate! I'm disappointed! They are difficult to sharpen and are off center like you mentioned, and they break so easily (I will sharpen them to "get it right" and the things break instantly!) Good luck finding a good one!
Yes, Ticonderoga are good! I know EXACTLY what you mean! It's VERY irritating to have a pencil that simply won't sharpen! And I get frustrated with the erasers, too!
I buy the 1 cent ones at Staples, I put up with them. I have a boy - he is one that, if I give him a mechanical pencil, he will click, click, click, break, click, click, etc. If I give him one that needs sharpened, he writes too hard, breaks the lead, if he is upset that he is taking too long with school, he will break it in two, etc. or if he wants to stall and not do school, he will sharpen it until it is too little to use. That's why I buy the 1cent ones and whatever they do on their own is minimal to what Elijah will do with them.
Well, we are using papermate naturals. We had to buy a package when Jazz went to private school for a semester and it had a huge box of these pencils...so we are still using them. They seem fine. I don't like mechanical pencils either. Speaking of which...at what point do you require turned in work in pen? for writing?
I would rather my son use pencil or computer for papers. I don't like ink. It doesn't erase and looks messy.
That's why I like the mechanical pencils, to teach them that they don't need to press that hard to write. When they did the lead would break. With ink, if my kids make an error they just draw a line through it and write the correction above it.
Lee, one line through it would be great, but scribbling through it is a mess. Elijah is also left handed and the ink smears.
we have the same crappy pencils everyone else has talked about, not to mention every time we get a pencil sharpener it seams to either be so loud or run out of batteries so quickly and the hand held ones get messy because they forget to hold them over the garbage can. and the kids cant seam to keep a pencil from one day to the next. when all the cheap ones are gone we will have to find a good package and I'll have to get them back when they are done.
When I was a kid, they started requiring us to use pern in seventh grade. Pencils were okay for tests and classwork, so we could erase, but anything to be written for turning in like an essay or something had to be pen. Some required notebooks to be done in pan. But for my students, I have an 8th grader that will soon start writing written assignments (reports, essays, etc) in pen -- we're also working on touch typing, so the handwritten in ink assignments phase probably won't last all that long. The others are far, far, far from ready for pen. Just a thought - I'll probably let the 8th grader start with Eraser-Mate. The black ones aren't too bad, but the blue or red ones are horrible.
