Mini Catapults!

The other day Dirty D and I were having a little pom war, throwing the little fuzzy craft pieces at each other while dodging each others tosses.  After a few minutes of playing, I decided we needed some artillery, so I suggested we make a pair of little catapults.  He understandably didn't want to stop in the middle of our game to do a big project, but I assured him they would take a few minutes to build, showed him the inspiration for my idea, and told him they would be fun to at least try out.  After explaining quickly what a catapult was, he was excited to begin building!

First, we got together all our materials.  To make two, we got two small blocks of scrap wood, a pair of clothespins, a pair of the jumbo craft sticks, two soda bottle lids, and my trusty hot glue gun.

First, we glued the clothespins down on one end of the scrap wood, securely attaching a little more than half of the clothespins to the wood.

Next, we attached the jumbo craft sticks to the clothespins with a little bit of overhang towards the front.

Then we attached the bottle caps to the ends of the craft sticks with some more glue and set them aside for a few minutes to dry (while we got back to our war).

After about five minutes we broke out our artillery!  They don't shoot very far at all from flat on the ground, so we experimented with different positioning.  Then Dirty D wanted to try using some toy balls we had and use the catapult to shoot at a tower made from empty soda boxes.

And guarded by the Hulk

Dirty D loved the catapults, especially destroying the soda box 'tower'.  It only took a little work before he got the aiming right, and then he was Dirty D, destroyer of worlds haha!  He was also super proud of himself for building the catapults with very little assistance from dear ole' mom! 

Here's where I linked up!