1. Let us set
equal to the brother's age.
By reading the question, it says that
So we can add
to both sides to solve for
!
So the brother is 26 years old.
2. To figure out how much the pencils were, we need to subtract the cost of the other items from the total. Let's let
equal to the cost of the pencil.

So the colored pencil was $12.40. On the other hand, that was one expensive pencil!!