Spreadsheets with their natural grid make a great, though not entirely flexible, platform for architectural design and for working with shapes. Build a house introduces students to using spreadsheets to create floor plans and to measure area. Most spreadsheets have amazing graphic flexibility. You may want to encourage students to use spreadsheets for art. Here is an incredible example: http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/05/28/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-artist/
Author: Ryan McQuade
Associativity
Parentheses are not only important in paper math, they are critical in spreadsheets. To make sure that terms are handled properly by spreadsheets, we have to be sure we use parentheses to write our formulas so that there is no ambiguity. Associativity gives us the principle behind this grouping, for we ask which terms do I associate with this other term?
Addition Patterns
Now that students can build addition tables, they should look for the patterns in them. We introduce them to a variety of things they might want to look for. We also suggest that some students may want to try to make a subtraction table. We have another Lab for making subtraction tables but this can provide some students with an interesting challenge. They should build these two tables side by side to compare their patterns.