What you need
- Pencil Paper
- List of the cost of the letters Play letters (optional)
- Calculator (optional)
What to do
- Pretend you are in charge of making signs for businesses.
- You get paid according to the letters in the sign that you make.
- The letter A is worth $1, the letter B is worth $2, C is worth $3, and so on until you get to Z which is worth $26.
- For the problems that follow, make an estimate of the cost of the sign first. Explain how you get your estimates.
- Then check your estimate to see how close you were.
Problem 1
How much would it cost to make a sign of your first name? Who has the most
expensive name in your family?
Problem 2
Pick a sign and figure out how much it costs. How much is a STOP sign?
How much is the sign with the name of your street?
Problem 3
If you wanted to make a sign that cost exactly $100, what could it say? What is
the shortest word or group of words you could make? What is the longest?
What to ask
- What strategies helped you estimate?
- Can you use skip counting or multiplication to help you?
- What qualities of a word or sentence make it “expensive?”
Did you know?
This activity provides an opportunity to practice making estimates of the sum of more than two numbers. This is used whenever you do not have a calculator handy, but need to make a decision on whether or not to spend money. Make an estimate first. Do not worry if the estimates are not very close in the beginning. Thinking and talking about how you arrived at an estimate will eventually help you improve your estimates.
What’s next?
- Have a contest to see who can come up with the most expensive word or sentence.
- Make vowels worth double their amount.
- Talk about what would happen if Z = $1 and A = $26.
- Estimate the cost of groceries in the cart before checking out.
- If you really sold signs, what would be a reasonable way to charge for making letters?
- Should some letters be more expensive than others?
- What about the style and size of the letter?
- Make up you own payment plan for making signs.