Pencils, Pencils, Pencils!

Pencils are my nemesis, they drive me absolutely insane!  They constantly need to be sharpened and kids lose them all of the time. I find them on the floor and strangely they don't belong to anyone.  Kids chew on them, eat erasers and even the little metal pieces.  I personally think they are the reason sickness spreads so fast through a classroom; especially with a broken and sharpened cup.  Ahhhh pencils drive me nuts!

So I had an idea to help a little with my pencil problems.  I thought if I could label the pencils with their names it would help with some of my issues.  When I find them all over the room I will know who they belong to.  Hopefully it will stop the spread of cooties just a little if they are not sharing pencils.  I also figured if I gave them each 2 pencils it will reduce the interruptions in the middle of lessons to sharpen pencils.  Then in the middle of the night an idea came to me!  I could use pencil flags to label the pencils and it would even stop them from rolling off desks.  I also figured address labels would be perfect for this!  So this is what I did.

Well my first prototype worked pretty well.  It even helped with kids not putting them in their mouths.  Periodically during the day I would have a pencil check and each student with their two pencils would get a point on Class Dojo.  (If you don't know about Class Dojo, check out the earlier post.)

Well this worked well for a few days, then some of the flags were being ripped and torn.  So I revised a little making new flags with labels and then making them more durable by using tape to laminate them.  

I did try just cutting strips of paper and putting them on with tape, but they didn't stick well enough.  I also figured out the easiest way to put them on the pencils was to stick the ends together, then slide over the pencil top and finish adhering it to the pencil.  If you use the wide packaging tape, it works great with just a  little piece just over an inch.  (The width of the tape is the perfect length you need.)

If you would like to download a label template in Word, click here.  You can customize with the names of your students.

Do you have any ideas or tips to help me conquer my skinny little yellow nemesis the pencil?

Pencils????

Pencils and my students drive me insane!  Seriously, what do they do with them?  I think they eat them or maybe I have a pencil fairy in the room taking pencils.  Every time we start an activity at least 3 or 4 kids can't find their pencil.  Pencils are always on the floor too!  Then I find them and and the erasers are gone and even the metal caps.  

Then when they have the pencils, it is the sharpening.....  If you sharpen one pencil suddenly everyone needs their pencil sharpened.  I try to have a cup of sharpened pencils and a cup of pencils to sharpen.  Although the sharpen pencils are taken and the "to be sharpened" cup never has pencils in it.  

I am at a loss of what to try.  I have desks so I can't have a table bucket with supplies.  Should I number pencils with their student numbers and give every student 2.  Should I put little flags on the pencils with their names,  I am teaching first this year, although some of my kids really are more like K.  I mean they will actually sit there and just look at the paper and half way through the assignment when I ask why they have not started they say "I don't have a pencil."  Really!

I need tips and suggestions, what do you do??  Am I the only teacher who has this problem?