I have yet to meet a homeschooler who doesn’t love office supplies. In fact, most of us seem to be on a mission to find the perfect pencil or pen. This past year, I think I found it.
We go through a lot of pencils in our house – they seem to break, vanish, or become too small to use very quickly. Because of that, I tend to stock up on pencils when they are on sale at back-to-school time. Unfortunately, I think that has led to some of the biggest frustrations about writing tools because most of these were prone to constant shattering of the lead making them impossible to sharpen or use effectively. Sometimes the wood around the pencil was so flimsy that it splinters. The pencil itself just doesn’t write well – making my kids annoyed and less willing to do their work.
When I happened to stumble across a huge pack of Staedtler pencils at Costco last year, I opted to grab it so that we could have more pencils. They were the best pencils we’ve ever used! In fact, we barely dented that large pack since the pencils themselves have withstood the tests of use and time.
The pencils in question are Staedtler Norica HB2. They are a blue on the outside, which I think is great because I can easily see them wherever the kids misplace them. They have white, latex-free erasers on the end – the kind that actually erase! They are great pencils.
But this company also has a lot of other great school supply products: erasers, math sets, colouring pencils, sharpeners, dry-erase markers, pens, and even a few crafty things like FIMO modelling clay.
We gave a few of them a test.
What intrigued me the most about their coloured pens and the dry-erase markers was that they are triangular! For kids, this shape of tool helps kids maintain a proper hand grip while writing. As an adult, I find it very comfortable, and unique. I’m a huge fan of colourful pens, and these write smoothly and cleanly. I think that these would make school work fun – even for the teacher.
Everything that we tried was a quality item – pencil crayons that colour excellently (they might become MY pencils!), a sharpener that WORKED (homeschoolers everywhere rejoice!), erasers that erase without tearing through a page, etc.
I’m sold. I am always going to look for Staedler products first. Their quality and durability not only for the pencils but everything else make them top of the line for me.
See what Shari and Tiffany thought of these tools.
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I found a nice long Staedler pencil in a park recently and agree that it is a great pencil! It’s the one I look for when I need a pencil. Also have a Staedler sharpener like the one in your picture and it is great! You can even replace the blades when they get dull. And we have some big white Staedler erasers that I always go to for erasing, because you are right, they actually erase everything!
Another great thing about the triangular shape of pencils and pens is that they don’t roll off the table!
I admit – I love my staedtler stuff!
Oh! Good point about the triangle shape! And I had no idea I could replace my sharpener blades. Brilliant. Thanks for stopping by.