Quick and Easy Catapults

This summer, we had a lot of fun making some simple, homemade catapults.

Even though I have a house full of girls, they love shooting, flinging, and chucking things just like their daddy! We definitely enjoy watching the Mythbusters Pumpkin Chunkin each year.

What started as a craft with mommy, quickly turned into a family affair. My husband couldn't resist jumping in and helping with target practice once he saw what these babies could do. I was quite surprised at the capability of these little guys.

My girls started by coloring two popsicle sticks with permanent markers. I stacked one of the colored popsicle sticks on top of 5 others (6 all together) and rubber-banded them together on each end. 

We attached a bottle cap to the end of the other colored stick. (We used hot glue, but it didn't quite withstand the torque and pressure so we had to reglue it a couple of times.)  We tried it a second time by using a drill and drilling a hole into the bottle cap and the popsicle stick. Then we used a brad to attach them together. It worked great! After, we rubber banded that stick and another to the top and bottom of the stack of sticks we already made.

My girls had fun seeing which things from around the house would fly the best. They tried everything -  cotton balls, rubberbands, polly pocket clothes, blocks, . . . 

The thing that worked best . . . mini marshmallows! 

Of course if mini marshmallows were the projectile, the target quickly became someone's mouth. I was having so much fun participating in the launching of the marshmallows, that I didn't get any pictures. But, you can take my word for it that it was fun for the shooter and the target and all the spectators as well.

So go out and make your own, you won't be sorry and it is a great boredom buster for any season of the year!

Here's What You Need:

• 8 popsicle sticks
• permanent markers 
• 5 rubber bands
• bottle cap (from a plastic container)
• brad & drill
• mini marshmallows

Here's What You Do:

1. Color  two of the sticks with the markers.
2. Stack one colored stick on top of 5 other sticks (6 total) and rubber band them together on each end. (We tried this again with big popsicle sticks - we ended up having to stack 10 sticks together to really make it fly. You can play around with how many you stack together to get the height that you want.)
3. Drill a hole the same width as the prongs of your brad into one end of the other colored popsicle stick. 
4. Drill a hole into the bottle cap. 
5. Use the brad to attach the bottle cap to the colored popsicle stick.
6. Stack that perpendicularly on top of the stack of 6. (Like a cross)
7. Stack another underneath the pile so it lines up with the stick with the bottle cap. 
8. Use two rubber bands to attach the sticks as seen in the picture above so they make an x across all 8 sticks. 
9. Pinch together the stick ends opposite the bottle cap and use a rubber band to hold them together.
10. Find some projectiles and some targets and fire away!