Valentine's Day Excel Lesson Plan
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Students Sort Valentine Candies by Color and Create an Excel Chart
Give each student a box of conversation hearts candies. Have them sort the candy hearts by color.
- Open Excel and create a title similar to "Valentine's Candy Chart" as shown in the illustration.
- List the candy colors in column A.
- List the quantities of candy by color in column B.
- Select the the data in both columns and create a bar chart.
- Click two times on the first bar. This will select just that individual bar for changing the fill. Right click on that selected bar and select "Format Data Point".
- Choose Fill > Picture or texture fill. Now click the insert from File button. Choose a heart picture to fill the bar. The heart will fill the bar but it will be stretched across the whole bar. Choose "stack and scale with 1 picture" to automatically fill the bar with the proper number of hearts.
- Continue filling the remaining bars with the proper color and number of hearts.
Some questions for students to answer about their charts:
"Which colors have the most/least hearts?"
"How many white and green hearts are there all together?"
Completed Valentine's Day candy chart example:
Download these Valentine's Day hearts to use to fill the bars on the charts.
Right click on each Valentine heart and "save picture as.."
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How to fill the bars with hearts:
Click twice on an excel bar. This will select only that bar for a fill. Right Click on the bar and click "format data point". Look for the small circles at the bar's corners to identify when the bar is selected.
In the Format Data Point dialog box, click "Fill" and select the "Picture or texture fill" radio button. Click the "Insert from: File" button and navigate to the hearts you downloaded from above. Click the "Stack and Scale with 1 units / picture" radio button to fill the bar with the proper number of hearts.
Continue filling each of the bars on the Excel chart with the matching candy heart colors.
