I was asked to review a set of Frixion erasable pens. ‘What?’ I thought. ‘Erasable pens? It can’t be.’
The idea behind them is to encourage children who are learning to write to continue with doing so.
Last October, I wrote a piece about pre-writing skills and how parents can help their pre-school children get young hands ready for the task of handwriting.
Today, children are more used to using a computer keyboard and simply ‘deleting’ a mistake, and they can become very impatient or lose confidence when they have to practice writing.
Like anything new, handwriting can be quite a stressful experience for young children. They can be scared to make a mistake and can worry about it being messy or illegible. Many kids are so used to everything being ‘perfect’ that they’re afraid of something not being right. While I don’t like to assign particular characteristics to genders, this is especially so with many young girls who can be perfectionists.
So, as a teacher of young children, I think the concept of an ‘erasable pen’ is a wonderful idea.
Do these Frixion pens work?
Yes, they do. They really are erasable with the eraser on the base of each pen. It’s fantastic! I was quite amazed and happily tested all 40 of the pen types in the set I was given. The pens come in a variety of colourful types – for example, highlighters, roller ball pens, ballpoint, gel pens and others.
While this set was given to me, the prices are quite reasonable with a gel pen costing around $3-3.50 and a ballpoint around $2. They can be purchased in packs of 10 so the unit cost is less.
They are a good size for young hands to grip and the external look matches the colour of the ink.
These Frixion pens are a great idea to help kids learn in the right environment. We know that making mistakes is part of growing up – and writing is a skill we all do still need, even if almost everything will be done in the future via a keyboard of some sort. If children can make mistakes, have no pressure in learning, have access to an erasable pen so they can correct or improve things if they want to, it helps their confidence levels and helps make learning more fun.
Overall, 5 stars.
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As Kylie makes clear, the Frixion pen set was given to her for this Tried & Tested review.
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