by Shelley Kishpaugh

Created on: April 11, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2009

Every fall, teachers put out THE LIST. The list is displayed in every store around town. It has parents running up and down aisles, searching for pencils, paper, glue, notebooks, tissues, pens, crayons, markers...and so on. Many of the items on the list have specific requirements, a particular type of glue or marker for example.

The dreaded school supply list - no parent is immune. What might seem unimportant becomes crucial. Who cares what kind of glue a child has for school? The teacher does. The simplest thing becomes complicated. Take pencils for example. One might think that any old pencil would do for a school aged child, but no. There are criteria. Mostly, the specifications are based on the 2B pencil. This particular type of pencil might actually have some real benefit to it, when compared to others, but mostly a child needs 2B pencils because they are the type of pencil the standardized test scoring machines are best able to read.

Luckily, most pencils commonly available are of the 2B variety. You would have to actually go out of your way to find a different type. Pencils other than 2B are used primarily for drawing and sketching, and would be found in art supply stores. Therefore, it is unlikely that you will accidentally buy the "wrong" type of pencil for school purposes.

So, once you have the 2B part taken care of, then the next thing to consider, when purchasing a school pencil, would be aesthetics. Children are excited by decorative pencils. If a child has pencils that he or she loves, school work becomes much more fun. Children can actually look forward to doing their assignments if they are excited about having cool pencils.

There are a wide variety of interesting pencils for children. Children might like to choose pencils featuring their favorite cartoon or movie character, dinosaurs, planets, animals of all kinds, or any sparkly, shimmery finish you might imagine.

The best thing about the decorative pencils involves the eraser. The old style yellow pencil with the pink eraser tends to rip the paper when a child is attempting to remove mistakes. The erasers on those yellow pencils also do not erase thoroughly, leaving unsightly gray smudges all over the page. The "fun" pencils generally have erasers made from a different material that erases significantly better than the old pink variety, along with being far less likely to erase holes in the child's paper.

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