It feels like just yesterday that we were jazzing up the school’s summer send-off with giant pencil decorations made of pool noodles and beach pails full of munchies, right? But with all the back-to-school ads we’re seeing lately, something’s telling us it’s closer than we think—eek! Well, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little excited about the return of all things back to school. Like, for example, these super simple, super cute pencil string cheese snacks. This is a fun one to make for the first day of school (after all, string cheese is pretty much the holy grail of lunchbox snacks). It’s also an awesome way to welcome kids back (pair them with juice boxes wrapped in notebook or graph paper!) or a fun handout at back-to-school events (PTOs and PTAs would love to have these at their welcome table!).

Tips

1. Draw the yellow rectangle body of the pencil first. Add the outlines next and carefully do the eraser last (if you try to color the yellow inside the black outline, it smears easily).

2. If it's humid, the condensation on the cold cheese does make it trickier to get the marker to adhere, so you may want to have something handy to wipe them down with.

3. If you opt to use sharp cheddar cheese sticks, those are already yellow, so no need to "color in the pencil"—saves a step!