Friday, December 11, 2009

Fun with words!

Stephen was home sick for a couple of days this week and was a little bored. Way back at the beginning of the summer I made a big list of activities they could do if they were bored, so I sent Stephen to look at the list. He took about 1 second and said he couldn't find anything. There was one activity I'd been anxious for someone to try but no one had yet, so I suggested we do it together while I do the dishes. He could do all the writing for us and I could just add my thoughts here and there. I don't know what this game is called, and I don't remember where I got the idea. Out of a book I think. Anyway, here it is.

Give each letter a cent value (a = 1 cent, b = 2 cents, etc.) then add up the value of words. Cab would be a 6 cent word - c = 3 cents, a = 1 cent, and b = 2 cents. What is the value of your name? How many $1 words can you find? "Excellent" is a $1 word.

Stephen was a little reluctant, but he was hooked after the first word he added up. He didn't care about the money part of it and mostly just went by points, so he was looking for 100 point words. It was a lot of fun! We worked on different words for quite a while, then when Annie came home we got her going as well. Here are some of the words we tried.

Stephen = 84
Santa Claus = 111
Christmas = 110
envelope = 94
magnet = 60
sausage = 73
winner = 83
forest = 83
banana = 33
Aimee = 33
orange = 60

And we did come up with a couple of 100 point words! Pumpkin and telephone both added up to 100. Anne found another one for us: Annie Mobley! She was pretty excited that her name would add up to 100 points. Can you find any more $1 or 100 point words?

5 comments:

Joseph and Mary + Seven said...

That's so fun. I'm going to do that with my kids! Thanks Aimee, you always have such great ideas!

nanajohanna said...

I think that's a wonderful game and it's great that you have a list of things for the kids to do when they're bored. And I hope that Stephen is feeling better!

Jim said...

Once again, our Aimee shows herself to be a far above average mom. Great idea. Maybe Stephen would like to take a stab at adding up "antidisestablishmentarianism." I'm sure I could never do it. "You do the math."

Alice Brewer said...

Great Idea Aimee! I read this to the kids on Saturday and they've been coming up with words since then. Our favorites were Supercalafragilisticexpealadocious (369), Hokey Pokey (137) and lollipop at (107). Scott thinks it would be a great idea to get weakly allowance based on this system using dollars instead of cents. I told him to get a job!

The Rigby Bunch said...

Thanks for such a great idea Aimee! I'm going to need some ideas to keep little ones entertained this winter!!