We are creating and using "penny projects" in our curriculum at various grades.

  1. Challenge #1 for Lower School students, 1-4: Using Microsoft Word, can you COPY and PASTE to make 100 pennies? Click here for the Microsoft Word document. Click here for the solution with 5 in a row. Click here for the solution with 10 in a row.
  2. Challenge #2 for our students, 5-8: Using Microsoft Word, can you make 1,000 dots on a page, 50 to a row, 20 rows down, 50 x 20 = 1000? How long does this take you? Click here for the solution.
  3. Challenge #3 for our students, 5-8: Using Microsoft Excel, can you figure out how long it will take you count from 1 to 1,000 .... from 1 to 1 million ... from 1 to 1 billion ... from 1 to 1 trillion? Click here for the solution.
  4. Challenge #4 for our students, 5-8: When you shake 10 pennies and drop on the ground, how often does it come up 5 heads and 5 tails? how often does it come up 10 heads and 0 tails? Click here to download a spreadsheet that will help you. Or you can click here to see what we learned when we did it on the last Tuesday of January (we tried it 1060 times with many students helping)
  5. Challenge #5 for grade 8 students 2/11 ... group #1 is to find out using Excel how much 1 million and 1 billion pennies will weigh ... group #2 is to produce a Photoshop graphic of 1 million pennies in the computer lab using 200 jars ... group #3 is to produce a Photoshop graphic of 1 million pennies on 129th street using 200 jars ... below are pictures with info to help you
    computer lab | computer lab again | one jar weighs how much | 129th street | size of one jar
    Solutions to some of the above problems: weight by NTH & ONT | weight by ACC & NPD | unfinished Photoshop
  6. Challenge #6 for students in grades 4 or above ... click to download the MS Word document ... see how many penny jars you can fit in our computer lab ... remember that each jar holds 5,000 pennies and weighs 30 pounds ... use COPY and PASTE in Microsoft Word ... 3 sample solutions ... 1 ... 2 ... 3
  7. Challenge #7 Click here for the Storefront Penny Quiz ... you can create your own account or use a generic one with login and password of "storefront"
  8. Challenge #8 Click here to get a document to see how many jars you can put into our lab ... please remember to use perspective to make the jars smaller as they get farther away from you
  9. Challenge #9 Click here to see a penny structure that you can build!