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The Pencil Pal Club & Giveaway Winner Announcement

I’m not sure about you, but it’s the little things that can easily cause me to get overwhelmed throughout the week. You know the ones – that paper you forgot to make copies of, the school-wide project or contest that ends up taking ten minutes away from your lunch break, and….pencils! In the past, I spent time every week sharpening pencils for my kids. It’s my own choice that I do not let my kids sharpen their pencils:
1) The sound of the sharpener throughout the day or even in the morning drives me nuts! 
2) It wastes instructional time. 
3) It wastes instructional time.
I’ve tried multiple ways of dealing with the whole pencil issue. You can read about one of those ways here. I have successfully solved the “I lost my pencil!” issue by using Pen Pals on our desks. These little things are amazing! I bought mine at Walmart, but you can also buy them on Amazon or in office supply stores. 
To be honest, I think every class handles pencils differently. Some classes cannot keep pencils to save their lives. For other classes – it’s not a big deal. They use them until they break or are worn down, and then they switch their pencil for a new one. This year, my class is awesome about pencils. They don’t abuse them and they use their pencils for as long as they will last – yay! 
But I still hate sharpening pencils. And it still eats up our class time if I let them sharpen the pencils themselves. So last year, I started The Pencil Pal Club. 
The Pencil Pal Club is for parents. They join the club and help our classroom by….sharpening pencils! Yes, it’s a small act but it makes a BIG difference in our lives! I simply send a bag of pencils home with a kid that need sharpened in a plastic bag, along with a pencil sharpener. Parents sharpen the pencils and return the bag and sharpener back to school with their child. It’s THAT easy! It is a HUGE time saver and it makes both their teacher – and the students – happy, happy, happy! 
You can download the letter that I send home to use in your own classroom by clicking on the photograph of the letter below. 

I’ve also put together an editable copy of The Pencil Pal Club letter. This download is a PowerPoint file. Simply download it by clicking on the picture below, and then type your own words into the body of the letter. 

I hope The Pencil Pal Club makes you as happy as it makes me! It is always a huge help to me throughout the year and I have found that many parents WANT so much to help, but often can’t make it into the school to help out. This gives them a way of helping out at home, on their own time. It involves parents that otherwise might not have been able to volunteer – just like those parents who like to cut things out and assemble things at home! Your families WANT to be involved – don’t be scared to ask them for their help! If they can – great! If they can’t – that’s okay, too! 🙂 We’ll never know if we do not ask. 🙂
Before I head off to church, I want to share the winner of my $50 Blog Makeover Giveaway for a $50 TeachersPayTeachers gift card! The winner is…
Thank you to everyone who entered! Amy, I have emailed you and look forward to hearing back from you! Congratulations!! 
Have a wonderful week everyone! 

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4 Comments

  1. Great idea. I agree, it's totally those little things that pile up and stress me out. Unfortunately, for teachers there are about a billion of those little things. 😉

  2. I began implementing this last year and it is such a HUGE help! I have moved to a new school, and my partner teacher loves the idea and is going to use it too! Thanks for sharing this great idea–I love that it helps working parents feel like they are doing something to help out!

    1. Kristen, I am SO happy to hear this! Yay! Thank you so much for sharing this with me. 🙂

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