Make weapons for peace

I am a pacifist. I am raising JED to be that, as much as I can. The rule is that we have no guns in the house. They have ended up fashioning their own guns out of hangers and ice cream sticks and what not.

I did not think that I would be running a weapons factory out of my house ever. Until this morning. All in the name of peace.

I was rudely awakened this morning by Evan who was complaining that his brother and sister had taken his catapult.

Blurry eyed, I asked "What catapult?" I didn't recall okaying a catapult in the house.

Apparently, he brought one home from Science yesterday. It was made out of ice cream sticks. It looked ingenous, harmless and a lot of fun. It also didn't look that difficult to make so I endeavoured to make another one or two so that the fighting would stop.

I ended up making 3 because they were fun to make, took less than five minutes and by making 3 of the same, it would be a better guarantee that an arms race wouldn't develop between the 3 warring factions.

All that was required was 10 ice cream sticks per catapult, 4 rubber bands,  a bottle cap glued on with some super glue and some green beans.

For posterity, here are the easy-peasey, lemon squeezy instructions.

1. Band 8 ice cream sticks together at each end.
2. Band the remaining 2 ice together on one end.
3. Use fingers to pry the two sticks apart.
4. Shove the wedge of 8 sticks as far in as you can get it.
5. Use 1 rubber band and band it diagonally where the 2 sets of sticks intersect.
6. Repeat on the other diagonal to form an X.
7. Use super glue and glue the bottle cap on, leaving a tiny bit of space behind the bottle cap to launch whatever is in the bottle cap.
8. Leave to dry.

We left the house early and went downstairs for a test launch before the bus came. Green beans were the choice of ammunition.

Evan learnt very quickly the physics behind it; that he had to hold down the other end of the catapult lest the entire contraption went flying with the green beans.

There was great glee as they loaded and launched their beans at Mommy who was trying to take photographs of them. I think I still have some in my hair somewhere. I just heard one hit the ground and roll away into some dark corner under my desk.

Beans on the launchpad.

Not surprisingly, Jordan and Evan brought theirs to school for Show and Tell. Jordan wanted to bring her ammo as well but I told her she was going to lose them in her bag. She could use other forms of ammo when she got to school. I just hope it's not something hard that can hurt some other kid and cause the school to call me and request "Please Mrs Tan, don't make weapons of mass destruction for the children". Muffin couldn't care less, abandoned his weapon, found a stick and promptly beat a bush into bald submission.

But it served its purpose. There was no more fighting. They developed an alliance amongst themselves as they aimed to pelt Mommy with as many green beans as possible. There was cooperation between them, as Jordan taught Muffin how to launch his green beans in the right direction and they all shared ammo amongst themselves.

Now, to go back and visit the live firing range in a few days to see if dozens of little seedlings have sprouted.

Trying to link this to SANSES' Talkative Thursday but the link don't work!


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