Santa's Workshop: Mastering Spreadsheets

Santa uses a Naughty and Nice list to choose the gift for each child. For nice children, they get the gift they most desire. For naughty children, they get a lump of coal.

Students are provided with a small list of Naughty and Nice children, and the material required for each gift. Students will use basic Math to calculate the quantity of each material required to build all the toys.

Then students are provided with a bigger list of 1000 children, making it almost impossible to do manual calculations. At this point, students are introduced to the need for spreadsheets and how spreadsheet formulas can help do this task easily. They will learn the basics of spreadsheets first and then the important functions COUNTIF and SUMPRODUCT, later they will apply these formulas to calculate the total quantity of each material required for 1000 gifts.

They will finally write a letter to Santa explaining how spreadsheet functions helped them.