Robin Hood

Storming Nottingham Castle

You are one of Robin Hood's merry persons and are helping Robin to storm Nottingham castle to rescue Maid Marion. She is being held prisoner by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. You need to build a ballista to catapult rocks at the castle walls to break them down. Once the walls have been breached you can enter the castle and rescue her.

There are two pictures of a ballista below and some instructions for building it. Use screwed up pieces of newspaper as 'rocks' for your ammunition and see how far you can fire them.

You will need

• 7 long garden canes
• 10 medium elastic bands
• 24 thick, strong elastic bands
• a strong circular recepticle, such as an empty ice cream container
• newspaper to make ammunition

Instructions

1. Lash the canes together using the medium elastic bands to make the frame shown in the diagram above.
2. Loop together the strong elastic bands to form three equal lengths of elastic (3 x 8 elastic bands).
3. Pierce three holes equally spaced in the tub and attach one end of each length of elastic bands to the tub at each hole. Hook the other ends over the frame as shown, do the bottom one first.
   
4. To operate, put a ball of ammunition in the tub, pull back the tub stretching the elastic and let go to fire.

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