These giant pool noodle pencils will definitely brighten up your classroom and add fun to the hallways of your school. They are perfect for decorating, creating a bulletin board display, and just having fun with your students. Plus, all you need is a few items from the dollar store. (We made ours for just $2, and all items are available at the dollar store.) Here’s how we made ours.
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What You Need
- Yellow pool noodle
- Red pool noodle
- Duct tape
- Cream paper (8.5″ x 11″) to make your cone
Make your pencil tip.
It’s easy to make a pencil tip template with just cream-colored paper. You can use our sample here as a guide, but you’re essentially making one-fourth of a circle from an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper that you will then tape together to make a cone. We recommend including little notches in the template. That’s what you’ll fold and then glue to the top of your pool noodle.
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Cut the noodles to make your pencil.
You can make your pencil as long or as short as you’d like! We’ve seen some teachers use the entire noodle to make a giant one for a door or bulletin board. Or you can go with a smaller pencil, like we did here, that kids can pick up and personalize.
Then for the eraser part of the pencil, we recommend just a few inches of the red pool noodle. But if you have a giant pencil, you might go for five or six inches instead.
Tape and glue it all together.
Once you have your three pieces, put them all together. For the eraser, all you need is duct tape to hold it in place. This serves as the silver/metal part of the eraser, too. We used hot glue for the tip of the pencil, to keep it all in tact.
Now it’s time to decorate.
Here are some of our favorite ways we’ve seen giant pencils (and crayons) featured in the classroom.
Try them as colored pencils.
Source: @elementaryarts
You could make one for each student.
Source: @a_x_theboard
Line ’em up on a bulletin board.
Source: @samiebuca
Make a box of crayons.
Source: @coloroutsidethelinesnyc
Do you have creative ideas for using pool noodle pencils, or just pool noodles in general, in your classroom? Come and share how in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.
Plus, many more genius ways to use pool noodles in the classroom .
