Craft Stick Catapult

Michael's eyes light up every time I pull out the tally sticks (craft sticks) as part of our math program. He'll play with them for 15 minutes after the end of a lesson and wanted to use them for art projects.

So when I saw a box of 1000 at the store I got it so I wouldn't need to ration the craft sticks any more.

As the amazingly creative person that I am, all I could think of to make with the craft sticks was this:

Let's just say the children were underwhelmed and leave it at that.

So I went searching the internet for something to wow the children with and I found directions for building a catapult out of craft sticks. Perfect! We spent a very happy two hours building and playing with the catapult. Since then, Michael has slept with it - twice.

After the initial fascination wears thin I think we'll do a few experiments with it. I'll gather a variety of items and we'll guess which will fly the farthest. We'll change out the rubber band for longer and shorter versions and see how that changes the performance of the catapult. We'll take measurements of our farthest shots. So many learning possibilities.