Come Outside: Series 3: Pencils

Auntie Mabel is drawing a picture of Pippin but she needs a new pencil. They go to a stationery shop to buy one. Auntie Mabel wants to see where pencils come from. She and Pippin fly in Spotty Plane to Seathwaite Fell where graphite was discovered five hundred years ago and Auntie Mabel tells a story about a sheep farmer who used graphite to mark his sheep. They visit a graphite mine where they see how the graphite was chipped away from the rocks. Then they visit a factory where pencils are made from graphite and clay. Pippin is given a piece of graphite and Auntie Mabel buys a set of coloured pencils. Now she can complete Pippin’s portrait in colour – once Pippin has stopped making marks on it with her graphite.