Pop Quiz, hot shots:
What is the ONE biggest hindrance to my homeschooling day?
Pencils!
Pencils just might end my homeschooling career. I kid you not. I have purchased three, count them ONE, TWO, THREE electric pencils sharpeners. I have purchased in the neighborhood of fifteen smaller, hand pencil sharpeners.
They have all broken. I blame the children.
We can never find a pencil when we need one. And when we find one, it is not sharpened. Of course, we cannot locate a *working* pencil sharpener, and if we are so lucky to do so, we cannot seem to sharpen the pencil correctly.
Plus, and this is probably my most favorite part, Handsome Dude chews the top off of each and every pencil.
Why?
We cannot be certain. But I do know this! If we are lucky to have located a working pencil and, heaven forbid, we make a spelling error . . .
We must take ten minutes to try and find an eraser. Because we can’t have children writing about the raping of presents, now can we?
No. No, we cannot.
Oh, sure. It sounds simple.
Pencils.
But TRUST ME. Pencils will be the death of me.
Who’s ready for Thanksgiving break?
Holla!
Yes. There is a large truck on top of the cabinet thingie.
It is in a time out.
Today, the girls are finishing up some art history lap books and the boys are destroying the kitchen via Play-Doh. And I am lamenting the travails associated with pencils.
I just told Little Dude to not staple Play-Doh. True story. And he had the audacity to argue with me on it.
Last night, we went to The Best Buy and David and I were commenting on how out of touch we were with the technology of today.
Seriously. We are totally old now. And what, pray tell, is a smart TV?
Anyways.
David reminded me of a horrendous errand I sent him on last spring. I asked him to go to The Best Buy and purchase a cassette player.
I am certain that if I had a cassette player, homeschooling would be a source of delight and joy in my life.
Also, I need a decent pencil. But we already know that won’t happen.
There is a whole world of educational cassettes available to me at my local library. I just need a cassette player.
Best Buy Associate: Can I help you, sir?
David, looking like a guy who just came from a construction site. Because he did: Yeah, I need a cassette player?
Best Buy Associate: A what?
David: A cassette player.
Best Buy Associate, laughing: Yeah, dude. Sorry. We stopped carrying those a long time ago.
David did not appreciate me sending him on that errand.
And I am sad to report that I still don’t have a cassette player.
Nor a decent pencil.
Goodbye.
Mechanical pencils? It would solve the sharpening issue and part of the chewing issue but I’m sure they’d develop a whole new set of issues involving the mechanics of mechanical pencils.
Boys.
They’re different.
You know what? Let’s go out for drinks, you and me.
Today.
Like, RIGHT NOW.
In other news, I Have a cassette tape player in my boom box from 8th grade. Sadly the wires are shoddy and sometimes it acts like a fool. Only with CDs for sure though, I haven’t (snicker) tried (snicker) CASSETTE TAPES in it since 1998
I held out against cds for the longest time, till I couldnt find a working cassette player anymore lol. (Dont staple play doh lmbo)
Have you heard of Liberty Kids DVD’s? They’re on the Revolutionary War with a story mingled in. Instant play netflix used to have them. Great Christmas present right there whilst knocking out some history! My kids LOVE them!
(Just a tip on cassette players…Wal-Mart carries them)
Good luck.
{{{HUGS}}}
The cassette player I use in my classroom is of the Fisher Price durable variety so the wee smalls can do very little damage. Also, I am the only one who gets to use the electric sharpener. It is a special privilege granted to me having gotten a college education. 🙂
That is awesome. A college education can get you so far, can’t it?
They make really cheapo mechanical pencils…with erasers. I don’t think Handsome Dude will chew on those. Or maybe he will. 🙂
Pencils are the bane of my existence. We have been known to resort to doing school with crayons…at least it gets done, that’s my motto.
hit up goodwill for the cassette player!
Walmart and, I think, Radio Shack have cassette players, but we found it with the recording devices. Apparently people still use cassettes for recording interviews and such, so it will come with a built-in mic, but obviously it plays the cassettes back. Think of all the fun the kids would have making their own recordings. {snicker, snicker}
I love our electric sharpener. It was actually a shockingly inexpensive luxury at The Walmart. And our cassette player gets lots of use, playing Adventures in Odyssey episodes that we find for cheap at the thrift store.
And we have that purple PlayDoh stove!
But we use our fridge for toy time outs. It holds an arsenal of Nerf guns right now.
I have no answers for your pencil problem. We have the same problem.
Minus the chewing.
The erasers all disappear but I think it’s done without mouth involvement.
And mechanical pencils don’t work at my house because the little lovelies using them push too hard and constantly snap the lead.
We might have a cassette player in a box in the basement. I’ll look after the Thanksgiving break and can send it to you if you want. Happy Thanksgiving!
Pencils. They are the death of homeschooling. My kids do the same thing Erin’s do to the mechanical ones–push too hard and then click all the lead out. Traditional pencils are eaten (yes, eaten–it is the 18 month old whose older brothers kindly give her pencils because she wants them so badly) , broke, never sharp with no sharpener to be found… I too, hate pencils.
Playdoh. Now there’s an activity for when I feel like cleaning up a huge mess.
Bummer about the pencils & cassette player. If I were you, I’d go to The Costco and buy a giant box of good ol’ ticondarogas… because they’re the best… and that giant box of a million will last you at least a month or so. 😉
Also, I went to The Walmart last year looking for a VHS player and the guy in the electronics department laughed hysterically, saying “yah, there’s probably no place on earth to even buy one of those things.” Ok Mister, I’m not that old. VHS are awesome, because they last longer than DVDs in the jam-hands of my offspring.
Our ferocious vehicle has a cassette player, I use it daily with my magical cassette that plugs into my iPod. It keeps saying “clean,” but I couldn’t find a blasted cassette cleaner anywhere, so it’ll have to work “dirty.” ??
Speaking of the ferocious vehicle, you might want to get one of these bad boys. 😉
{it does well in snow & summer. check it. http://ninathemom.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-award-for-me.html}
Pencils drive me insane. I think it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with the pencil manufacturers and the pencil sharpener manufacturers. We have been through many sharpeners here too because none seem to sharpen right. Usually they only sharpen one side of the pencil, no matter which way you turn it to get both sides sharpened equally. If by some miracle it does sharpen correctly then the pencil lead just falls out because they all seem to have broken leads inserted into them. Pencil crayons give me the same issue. They either come that way, or they break inside when the pencils are dropped on the floor. Either way we lose, and the pencil makers win because we keep going back for more.
Can’t buy a cassette player? What is the world coming to? Craigslist? Yard sales? Thrift stores? We stopped doing pencils around here and went to mechanical pencils. Only I have granddaughters and not grandsons so they aren’t endlessly fascinated with them.
Ebay? Craig’s List?
And I would like to know what an Art History Lap Book is.
You will need this, plus some extra books that she tells you about. I got my artist books at the library. You make a lapbook out of file folders, I think it was three for each child. She has instructions in the download for how to put it all together.
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2011/06/worlds-greatest-artists-unit-study.html
And you can download it for free
http://store.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=70_76_78&products_id=194
Like it’s YOUR fault they don’t carry a cassette player!
LOL! I found your way here to read about the Pie Incident but saw this post. I too can never find a pencil at home to do homework! AHHH! I don’t know where all of the boxes have disappeared to…I purchased so many before school started this year. But I digress. I had purchased a couple of electric sharpeners before I gave up on them… I got this manual one for my classroom and the kids all line up to sharpen them each period (they say it is the best one all day–I teach HS). LOL. I think that it works great… I got it on Amazon.. http://www.amazon.com/X-Acto-Ranger-Wall-Mount-Heavy-Duty-Sharpener/dp/B00006IEI2/ref=sr_1_fed0_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1353563136&sr=8-4&keywords=pencil+sharpener+manual 🙂
1) The “raping a present” made me gol (giggle out loud, duh.).
2) I can’t believe Mr Lumberjack/Mr Craigslist did not automatically think and rush to finding a cassette player on Craigslist! Or eBay! He can find pigs and chickens but no cassette player?! What kind of man is he?! HA!!!!
Are the outside of pencils painted with lead paint? Just curious. All that chewing… Maybe paint that nasty nail polish you use to keep thumbsucker away from their thumbs on the end of your pencils and voila! Unsharpened, but unchewed pencils???
For what it’s worth–the janitors at my school say that the problem is not the sharpeners, it is the cheaply made modern pencil. Maybe a higher quality pencil would work better? Worth a try, but I am interested in the sharpener that Allison mentions.
(I just typed “love” here, like I know you personally–cause I feel like I do and I love your blog.) Thanks for all the laughs–your site is one that literally makes me LOL.
Pencils and pencil sharpeners irk me as well. Not just a homeschooling problem….trust me.
If you ever find a grand solution that does not involve pencils that children can take apart into a million pieces instead of doing their work, let me know. 🙂