"Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed."

YouTube is such a great source of entertainment for a stay at home dad. It's also a great learning platform. If you don't know how to do something, watch a YouTube video. Aside from all the ridiculous unnecessary videos on there of people making idiots of themselves there are loads of great ideas for entertaining your children. I use it a lot for learning craft techniques. While I was on there a few nights back a video popped up of someone making a crossbow using paper, lolly pop sticks and tape so as the boys are having a knights and castles phase at the moment I thought me an Seth could sit down and give it a try.

We sorted out the things that we needed and found the video to use as a tutorial, Seth was very excited when he saw it on the video in action. It fires pencils and yes I know that doesn't sound all that safe but the boys are very careful and I knew they wouldn't use them while I wasn't about.

Its what play tables were made for!!!

 I won't go in to to much detail as I will include the youtube video that I watched at the end of the post. They were pretty easy to make although some of the bending of the thick rolled paper was a pain even for me. The chap on the video used all white paper but we wanted ours to have a little more pizzazz so I chose pink (obviously) and Seth chose Blue. They actually turned out great, Seth's fired a lot better than mine but they both worked great. When we had finished I noticed another video of something I would like us to create but that's more of an outdoors summer activity so stay tuned.

For the full instructions on how to make a paper crossbow here's the video, enjoy...