Leprechaun Luck Probability Freebie

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Looking for a fun way to teach probability? You're in luck! The Leprechaun Luck Game is a freebie that allows kids to explore probability in an exciting game of chance. In order to win, your students will need a bit of luck, but they'll also discover that there's more than luck involved in winning.

You’ll need a box of Lucky Charms cereal for the class and one Leprechaun Luck game board for each student. You'll also need two dice for each game. Download the free instructions and the game boards from my TpT Store. Pair students with a partner of similar abilities, and display the directions as you explain the rules.




How to Play Leprechaun Luck

1. Each player places 12 Lucky Charms cereal pieces in any location on his or her game board. All of the pieces can be placed on one number, one on each number, or any other combination. 
2. Players take turns rolling the two dice and adding to find the sum. 
3. The student who rolled the dice removes all the pieces from that spot on his or her board. 
4. Players keep taking turns rolling dice and removing cereal until one person has removed all the cereal from his or her own board. The winner is the player who is the first to remove all the Lucky Charms.

Discussing Strategies and Exploring Probability
Let your students play a few rounds, discuss their strategies with their partners, and then switch to play against someone else. It's only after they play for awhile that the fun really begins!

Students soon realize that some numbers are luckier than others! You can’t get a sum of 1, so placing cereal on that spot is a sure way to lose.  After a while, they’ll start to realize that the numbers in the middle are luckier than those at the top and bottom of the board. Challenge them to figure out why this is true.

Hint: If they list all the sums they can get from every combination of two rolls, they'll realize that some numbers have more possible combinations of addends. For example, there’s only one way to get a sum of 2, but you can get a sum of 7 by rolling 1 + 6, 2 + 5, and 3 + 4. Maybe that’s why 7 has always been considered to be a lucky number! Allow plenty of time for students to play the game and explore probability concepts.

Check out the March Activities Pack for Upper Elementary!
This freebie is a sample from my March Activities Pack. Both the color and the black and white versions are included in the product, along with many other engaging activities for March and Spring. You can preview the packet from the March Activities from Teaching Resources page.

Your students will love this game, and they'll learn about probability, too! Kim Arnold commented on this freebie, and she summed up her thoughts this way, "Dice AND Lucky Charms in the same game? The kids will think that's lucky enough!" I couldn't have said it better myself!