If you shy away from hands on projects, I totally understand. They take far more time than you expect, more often than not the children need help and if you do complete the project, you may be left wondering if it was even worth it! Well let me tell you that this kit is awesome!! Not only does it actually work, the educational value surpasses many of the kits we’ve done in the past.
Don’t take my word for it, check out this exclusive look at an unreleased video in which my 12-year-old experiments with this trebuchet and our catapult as he aims for our castle. This lesson rapidly turned into a physics lesson as my son experimented with heavier counterweights, farther distances and lighter projectiles.
You can find links to these kits as well as all the other materials we used for our Middle Ages unit by checking out this blog post on Everything You Need to Know About the Middle Ages. You can also check out the video playlist to see how we put together this unit as well as all the projects and activities we did.
While we’ve done kits by Pathfinders before, this is the first time we’ve worked on the Medieval Siege Engine. As with the quality of all the kits we’ve used by Pathfinders, this one is filled with high quality and durable materials to construct a working, moving siege tower with catapult. And the best part? It actually works! We used it to launch rocks and other projectiles on our plaster castle we built several years ago. And, it actually broke pieces of the crenels on our castle towers. Everything you need comes in the kit except markers to decorate the flags, tape to keep your project in place while it dries and extra glue if needed. We did end up needing more glue to complete this project. You can check out a short video clip of my 12-year-old son testing out our Medieval weapons by checking out the the blog post to this video.