Pencils and Erasers

A typical classroom and homeschooling dilemma.  :-)  What on earth is a decent brand of pencils...ones that are actually not going to have to be sharpened all the time and heaven help us...the erasers...ones that actually erase without falling apart. 

Well, we tested them.  Ha!  Here is what we came up with...

#1 brand pencil

 

Dixon Ticonderoga

At first I was only using the black pencils.  

I found these only at Wal-Mart (when looking in a store vs. ordering online)

 I was so impressed that the black erasers did so well on the pencil marks.  Wow!  For once, no smears...nicely erased mistakes.  Then my lovely sister created a "school" pack for us.  Construction paper, glue, pencils, etc.  She purchased the yellow Dixon Ticonderoga pencils.  Guess what, they work nicely too! :-)  So that is the brand we will go with from here on out.   Spend the extra few cents...it's well worth it!

However, it wasn't long and their erasers were worn down.  :-(  Nice, hardly sharpened pencils with no erasers.  The rectangle erasers were not working...mainly due to convenience.  And the pencil top erasers, no matter what brand I bought at the store were cheap...didn't erase well and often cracked/broke.  So did a little research a found that Amazon (which I purchase most of my school stuff with points from our credit card) didn't carry Dixon erasers.  So I purchased...

PaperMate Arrowhead Erasers

SOLD!  

All normal pink erasers, rounded along the top so that they didn't get caught on the paper and crack down at the neck of them...AND THEY ERASE BEAUTIFULLY!  

There you have it...a quick post for any of you that have the irritating pencil/eraser problem.  :-D