I intentionally waited to do this with my husband. The reason? I knew he would be able to figure out any engineering problems with the thing and fix it the right away. I will show you what we did to follow the directions, and then I will show how he adapted it to make it work even better.
Materials Needed: Marshmallows, Shoe Box or Empty Kleenex Box, Scissors, Hole Punch, 2 Rubber Bands, 2 Pencils, 1 Pen, Glue Gun, Top of a Milk Jug, 2 Pipe Cleaners (not pictured), Tape (not pictured)
1. If you are using a shoe box, cut the lid half way through the box. Then, tape down the lid that is left. If you want to see the original instructions, you can find them here. Those are instructions for a Kleenex box.
2. Use a hole punch to put holes right next to where the lid ends. My husband adapted the original instructions slightly so the lid would act like more of a stopper to make the catapult stop and not shoot straight to the ground.
3. Using the glue gun, glue the milk jug lid to the end of one of the pencils.
4. Tie the two pencils together with a rubber band to form a cross.
5. Loop the other rubber band around the other end of the pencil with the milk jug lid, as shown above.
6. Fit the pencil contraption into the two holes in the box.
7. Poke a hole in the end and toward the base of your shoe box. Fold the pipe cleaner in half and hook it through the looped rubber band. Then pull the ends of the pipe cleaner through the hole of your box, thereby stretching the rubber band.
8. Once pulled through, fold the pipe cleaner and tape the ends to the side of the box.
9. Once done, it’s ready for use. Pull back on the pencil (not the cap) and let your marshmallows fly. Stay tuned for my husband’s adaptation that made it work even better.
In my husband’s world, everything revolves around ice cream. So his idea was to take mini marshmallows and chocolate chips and try to fling them into the ice cream bowl. There is a picture that makes it look like we got some in the bowl, but we actually didn’t. They were flinging across the room, but they still went lower than we wanted. We also didn’t find it very accurate either, so my husband decided to alter the build a bit.
He wanted the catapult to stop at a 45 degree angle so that the marshmallow would have a better arch. So, he decided to attach a pipe cleaner to the catapult to hold it into place. He then poked a hole in the bottom of the box and taped it down. This made sure the catapult wouldn’t go forward too much. It then worked really well. I knew I brought him along this ride for a reason.
Oh too fun! We just did catapults, too, but yours look a little more substantial than ours…our pom poms didn’t fling nearly as far as your marshmallows, but my kids still had fun! Check ours out if you’d like to try another type!