Natty prefers tic tic pencils, AKA mechanical pencils, while Sassy prefers wooden pencils, but they each use both.
While we love local school, we have no love for local pencils. They always seem to come with broken or crooked leads, splinter upon sharpening and just plain die. So on our annual trip to the USA, I stock up on Ticonderoga pencils, black for Natty and yellow for Sassy (only because they don't make pink).
Sassy loves to use small handheld sharpeners to sharpen her pencils down to one or two inches long before she retires them. Natty rarely uses his, preferring his tic tic. The tic tic pencils here are almost always 0.5 leads, but in the USA they are 0.7 and 0.9. The kids know which pencils take which leads and keep all their leads organized with no help from me. I think the whole mechanical aspect fascinates them, especially Natty.
Another clever USA purchase was a really nice multi-voltage pencil sharpener from Costo, otherwise I would never be able to keep a nice supply of sharpened pencils like in the photo!