Creating Beautiful Excel Graphs

I try to have my students take a class called Financial Fitness...This class allows practical application of life and how we spend money...or over spend it. The students have to set up a monthly budget, get a simulation job and pay their bills. They use an excel sheet to layout all their information, do auto calculations and very sophisticated formulas, then they create a graph that encompasses all this information. The graph does not mean much to my blind students, but it does to the teacher. If the rest of the class is going to create a beautiful and colorful graph with headings, titles and number plots, then I want my students to do it also. After all, they will most likely needs this in college and they may need it for their job.

After my students create the graph, I have them type it out in long form so I truly know they understand what they are doing. They move their cursor below the image of the graph and start to type out every number in an XY plot graph or shade in a bar graph selecting each cell accordingly, and then they plot the graph. If they need further detail, we take out the Draftsman or some other tactile drawing kit and draw it so they can feel what they just did. Once they have the concept in their head, they can easily create any graph required by the teacher.