Object: Ten pencils with broken points and one pencil sharpener.

Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you like to write with pencils? (Let them answer.) Good pencils are very hard to find. Whenever I am looking for a pencil, I either cannot find one, or when I find the pencil, it has a broken point, or has never been sharpened. Do you have that problem? (Let them answer.) I have a little story to tell you about ten pencils that I found around my house, and every one of them was either broken or had never been sharpened. This is their story.

I found these pencils in different places. One of them was on my dresser, several of them were in a kitchen drawer where they had been for several years. I even found one of them on the kitchen floor beneath the refrigerator. It seemed like every…