Although I thought the canvas bags were great gifts, I wanted to make something different for my cooperating teacher. I had seen so many of the crayon letters on Pinterest, and had even helped my roommate make one a while back. I thought these were great but crayons didn't seem to be the right thing for a middle school math teacher. Ergo, pencils.
If you know anything about middle school students and/or math, then I am sure you are well aware of the battle with pencils. The students almost never bring a pencil (or in most cases lose it by their second class). And it is my personal opinion (as I'm sure most math teachers would agree) math needs to be done in PENCIL! No exceptions.
And back to my project...
Pencils were a better fit than crayons.
Materials Needed:
Shadow Box
Pencils
Pencil Sharpener
Hot Glue Gun
I found a font I liked and printed out the letter N as a reference. I then cut the pencils to the size I wanted. This was easiest with a steak knife and then I broke them apart once I had cut a little around the whole pencil.
The worst part was sharpening the pencils. There were a lot of pencils in the end, and a lot of TINY ones. I decided to use a little hand sharpener instead of an automatic one. I ended up having to buy another sharpener because the first one got too dull from all the sharpening. And my fingers were killing me! So I'd probably think about choosing a that you don't mind sharpening--too little, and you may hate it by the end.
Once all the pencils were cut and sharpened, I covered the back of the shadow box with contsrcution paper. Then hot glued the pencils down.
**My biggest suggestion when doing this (besides the size of the pencils) is not mixing up the penicls once they are cut. All my pencils accidently got mixed up before I could glue them. So then I had to spend a day trying to figure out where the pencils went. I'm still not sure I got it completely.
All in all it was a big mess. So be warned!
Much
love,
Katie
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