Skip to main content

Summer Fling


There’s one thing about summer that is a constant throughout the years – popsicles (and popsicle sticks) are awesome!

Since I am a packrat and I see crafting potential in virtually anything, I always wash and save the popsicle sticks when we’re done. Who knows what we could build or do with them later. Well today, we decided to use a few of our stash and make a real catapult for no reason other than the fun of seeing how far we can fling stuff.

First I explain how a catapult works - it works just like our arms do when we throw things. A catapult is loaded with whatever you want to throw and then it goes back a bit and then forward, releasing whatever it holds. How far we can throw depends on how long our arms are, how strong they are, how far we move them before release and how heavy what we are throwing is. We start with those principles and begin crafting our catapult.

The arm/stick strength is fixed but I show them how we can vary the length and movement. I hold two popsicle sticks in a v-shape and put a third stick sideways just before the point. I then launch a Cheerio across the kitchen table (if you’re trying to visualize that, it looks just like the pics to come without the string holding it together, hence my inability to do it and take pictures. Then I put two sticks stacked on top of each other to replace the one horizontal stick and the kids see that with two sticks I can make the Cheerios go farther. They decide that three sticks is perfect.

Then I show them how we can change the length of the "arm" that is moving by moving the horizontal stack of sticks closer or further from the v. When we decide just how we like it, we start building.

Step 1: Stack 3 popsicle sticks on top of each other and tie them together on both ends.


Step 2: Take 2 more sticks and form them into a V. Put the wrapped stack of sticks in the middle and secure with string. If you tie it with just a tiny bit of slack, you can slide the inner sticks along the V to adjust how far you can launch things. The kids thought that was great although motor skills at their age really affect trajectory more than anything else.


At this point you are done. Put something on the end of the unbound sticks while holding onto the string side and let it fly. Except that holding things on which was straightforward to me, turned out to be quite complicated for my preschoolers. No problem, we improvised.

Step 3: We used the caps from mini bubbles that we had used up and were in the recycling bin. Coke bottle tops would work too but they are a bit smaller. Hot glue the lid to the unbound end of the V.


  
We make a second catapult so that each kid can have their own. Now we’re ready for some good old-fashioned fun. The kids quickly pick wild cherries and blueberries from our yard (we have a nice little Eden back there and ended up with giant trees of them after I let the kids plant some grocery story fruit in the yard. I never thought any of it would grow. The blueberry plant is Gorgeous by the way - when the fruit ripens the whole truck turns maroon. Ok, now I have to post a pic. Here's Abby picking some blueberries to launch-

You see the randomly planted blueberry tree by the edge of the driveway. We had to dig the other one up so they didn't ruin out landscaping in the front yard. We also ended up with a strawberry patch in the middle of the yard that we have to keep mowing down. I’m scared because this summer they planted watermelon and cantaloupe seeds – no way those can grow like berries, untended in the suburbs, right? Knowing little about gardening we are not going to eat them so we mostly use them as organic paints for crafts and now launching.) Anyway! Back to flinging stuff...


This picture (below) is my favorite because you can see the cherry flying over the edge of the deck.


  
Then the rain came (for five random minutes in the middle of an otherwise sunny day) and we had to go inside. No backyard berries in the house! As it turns out the McDonalds happy meal toys that we save in a bin are the perfect size for our catapults. My girls squeal as their fairies and My Little Ponies fly through the living room.

The perfect summer fling.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gripping Geometry

Both of my kids know their basic shapes (square, triangle, circle) very well.    Briana even knows all of the basic extended shapes (pentagon, octagon, star, oval, rectangle, heart, and diamond).   Abigail gets the extended shapes correct some of the time but not always yet.   I credit the kids’ love of puzzles, specifically the Melissa and Doug puzzle that shouts out each shape’s name in a weird monotone if you put it in the correct space. At this point I think that there is a diminishing return in adding dodecahedron to their vocabulary or splitting the triangle into isosceles and equilateral and the rectangle into a parallelogram and a trapezoid.   That being said I do want to expand on their knowledge of shapes (and spending the day on shapes will reinforce what they already know too).   So this week I will literally expand the shapes for the kids- Squares into cubes Rectangles into boxes or cuboids Circles into cylinders and spheres Triangles into ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spellbound

My kids love the first two Harry Potter books (the only ones they are allowed to read so far). My mother-in-law also loves the Harry Potter books, and this week she was in town and the kids were in Harry Potter heaven. All day long they talked about the things that happened in the books and cast spells. My mother-in-law decided to show the kids how the spells were usually made up of Latin words and the kids were fascinated, so when my inlaws left this morning I decided to keep up the fun and stave off the grandparents-are-gone-cryfest.   T he kids, with my inlaws, had taken spells from Harry Potter and broken them down into their roots.   I ask the kids what spells they wish they could cast. Abby wants to turn someone into a baby. We look up the root of the word baby (I have a dictionary app on my phone and when you search word you can click to get the definition, synonyms, origin, grammar, and “learners” that includes pronunciations, inflections, and common e...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Data With Destiny

My girls are budding entrepreneurs. Since she was three years old, Briana has been telling me that she is going to open a boutique and be a designer, and she named her store Boutique Girls. She is now 7, but has not forgotten this dream. We’ve been through at least 5 logo changes, from all of the letters in balloons to the current logo below. And now Abigail wants in on the fun. She wants to be a confectioner. Briana and I regularly have little debates about aspects of her store: Girls clothes only or boys too? Accessories? Online sales or not? Color of décor? Location (she says Paris or New York, I say close to home J )? We even spent a whole night talking about the kind of lighting she wanted once. But lately her favorite thing to talk about is pricing. She is learning about coins and value at school and has come to realize that pricing and making actual money is a part of being a designer. This has led to some awesome conversations and a lot more awareness when...
Post a Comment
Read more