Graphing Coins on Excel- 2nd-6th Grade

I was inspired by a coin collection that a student shared with me last week.  I wanted to help him find some of the coins that he needed to add to his collection.  Knowing that I had a huge collection of coins in my house that had been sitting around for at least the last decade, I thought I could find some of the coins he was looking for.

This small idea turned into a very exciting idea for Monday's computer class project.  In the end, I decided to have the kids make a "guess-estimate" of the total money that was in my coin collection.  The students recorded their guesses on the Excel spreadsheet.  Next, the students typed labels (pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters) into the cells of the A column.  Then, they each took a handful of coins, and they sorted the coins into groups, counted how many coins were in each group, and recorded their data into the appropriate cells in the B column.  They used the "auto sum" tool to add up the total number of coins that they had in their handful.  I recorded their data into my own spreadsheet.  I showed the kids how to use formulas (ex: =B4*5 for nickels) to find the value of each group.  I also showed the kids how to divide the total amount by 100 to convert the total number of cents into dollars and cents.

The best part of this project is that the students will research different charities, and they will vote on one charity to be a recipient of the grand total as a donation!  The grand total was $98.12!