Homemade PVC Pipe Canons - Tutorial

My six year old wanted a pirate party for his birthday this year, and I decided I wanted to make canons so they could have a real pirate “battle”. I looked around online and couldn’t find a tutorial for anything that was really functional. I found a lot of tutorials for how to make something look like a canon, but nothing that would actually shoot anything.

After scouring the web, I decided to simply make my own. With the help of my lovely sister, Christy (who has an awesome blog over at My Homemaking Experiment), and my physics minor (I knew going to college would come in handy some day!) we figured out the mechanics of the canon we wanted to make, as well as the materials we needed.

With our planning completed I took off to Lowe’s to pick up the PVC pipe. We ended up making five canons, so I bought a 5’ section of 2” PVC pipe and had the guy at Lowe’s cut it into 12” sections for me. Then I bought 1” PVC couplers to use for the inside of the canon (to eject the canon balls from the canon).


Material List: (this is for one canon)

• 1 ft long 2” PVC pipe
• 1 1” PVC coupler
• 2 7” x 1/8” 1/4 lb rubber bands (or any other long, strong rubber band)
• 2 screw in eyelets
• 1 6” piece of wood – dowel, tongue depressor, etc
• string

Tool List:

• drill (you’ll need a bit the size of your eyelets, and another bigger bit for the holes for the rubberband and string)
• pliers
• scissors
• hacksaw (if you are using a dowel)

Instructions:
Step One
Drill holes with your small bit (the one the size of your eyelets) approximately 1 1/2” from one end of your PVC pipe tube. The holes should be directly on opposite sides of the tube.

Step Two
Screw the eyelets into the holes.


Step Three
Using your larger drill bit, drill four(4) holes in the 1” coupler piece. The holes should be toward the ends of the coupler, and the holes on each end should be directly opposite each other on either side of the coupler.

Step Four
String the rubber bands through the holes on one side of the coupler. To “tie” the rubber bands, simply loop them through the hole, then put one end of the rubber band through itself.

Step Five
Prepare your piece of wood. If you are using a piece of dowel, you will probably need to use a saw to cut notches in the wood at either end of the dowel. If you are using tongue depressors (what we used) then you can probably just cut the notch with scissors. We ended up also hot gluing the string to the sticks, which was kind of a pain, and they keep coming apart. I will be replacing them with dowels.

Step Six
Thread the piece of string through the end of the coupler opposite the rubber bands.

Step Seven
Tie the ends of the string to the ends of the dowel/stick. Your “inside piece” of the canon should look like the photo on the right below.

Step Eight
Use the pliers to open the eyelets slightly. Thread the loose ends of the rubber bands through the eyelets on each side of your PVC tube. Using your pliers, close the eyelets so the rubber bands don’t fall off.

Step Nine
Drop the stick attached to the string through the PVC tube, then follow it with the coupler piece, and then the rubber bands. Follow the photos below:

Then pull the stick out the bottom as shown below. Position the stick perpendicular to the PVC tube.


That’s it! You now have made a PVC pipe canon!

We used plastic golf balls (which I eventually spray painted black) as the canon balls. I also spray painted the canons black as well.

Here is a video demonstrating our finished canon! The kids had a blast with them, and they were pretty cheap to make. Probably a few bucks per canon.

And here is the video of what we actually used the canons for. (the video is double time, they weren't actually shooting the canons that fast - ha!)

If you make this canon, I’d love to see photos or videos of how it worked for you! If you have questions, feel free to ask.

It’s a Zoo Out There

Or in there. Where? The playroom.

So we tamed the animals and put them in a real zoo.

Well, a zoo made of 1x2’s and dowels.*

Inspired by this $160 zoo that holds way more stuffed animals than I would ever allow our children to own. And ours cost about $20. That’s approximately $140 savings. And Mr Einstein and I got to work on a project together. Which we love doing. Okay, I’ll be honest, which we’re learning to love doing together.

How do you tame the zoo at your house? Do your kids love stuffed animals as much as mine do? Do you have a stuffed animal quota?

* sorry for the lame picture. This picture was showing the aftermath of General Conference in April. I’ll replace it with a better picture of the zoo when I get a chance.

Building Blocks... er, cups

You can have all the toys in the world, and the dishes in the kitchen are still the most entertaining.




Apparently this one below is the "Eiffel tower of winona." I have no clue where he gets this stuff.




But hey, imagination, motor skills, stacking, he's even learning a little 1-1 correspondence here stacking the cups with their openings together.




Even J wanted to get in on the action, even though her creations weren't quite as sophisticated.





What do your kids play with in the kitchen? Do you let your kids play with dishes? Are there "off limits" cupboards, and then some that are free-for-all?

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Play Food

V has been feeding me play "food" and bringing it to me in a cardboard "magic box".




This is ice cream. Mint maybe? Or cotton candy?




Donuts and "square apples" - I am unfamiliar with that type of apple. Now Braeburn, Gala, Fuji - I know those. But square apples are completely new to me.

Pretend play is really important for kids. It is linked to the development of a lot of cognitive skills in children, including self-regulation (which any mother of a tantrum-throwing two-year-old would agree is a very important skill).

A number of researchers have focused on the relationship of play to specific cognitive strategies such as self-regulation, narrative recall, divergent problem solving, and rule understanding. Following Vygotsky (1978), who theorized that young children use private speech in play to regulate their behavior, eventually transforming this private speech into self-regulation through internal thought, Krafft and Berk (1998) compared the private speech of preschool children in Montessori and traditional play-oriented programs and found that more private speech occurred in the play-oriented setting, especially during pretend play with fantasy characters

How often do your kids engage in pretend play? Do you ever join in?

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Play and Sort

I am a big fan of sorting.

And a little obsessive.

Of course, like any good obsessive mother, I have to make sure the kids are obsessive, too. And then, there is the fact that sorting is good for kids cognitive development. You don't need fancy games or worksheets or projects to teach kids about sorting. In fact, all you need to be slightly neurotic about the playroom being organized, and then you will have an opportunity every day to sort with your kids!



I made these toy bags for Christmas one year when V was getting too old for just baby toys and I felt like the toys were taking over the family room. There was an animal one, too (with an elephant on it!) but our animal collection quickly outgrew the size of the bag.



I also realized that the bags are only really good for toys that are better to play with in a set (train tracks, blocks, dishes) where these plastic drawers work better for "categories" of toys (robots/people/machines, building blocks, animals, etc). If the kids are looking for a lion, they just pull out the animal drawer and get a lion, instead of dumping out the whole bag.

And when it's time for clean up? Sorting practice!

I made signs from pictures I took of the kids' actual toys for the front of each drawer - to make it a little more personal, and to help them with sorting. I was thinking of printing them in color, but I think the black and white is less distracting. I am pretty happy with our system for now, but I want to build a toy shelf/cupboard that I can lock up (when the kids don't clean up their toys or when we don't want them out all over the place). However, I think I will keep a lot of our current system when I build the cupboard.

How do you organize toys? Do you have to convince yourself that having all those little toys everywhere is actually good for your kids? How do you get your kids to clean up their toys? Do you play games with them?

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Letter Box

I wish I could remember where I first saw this idea. It was probably listed on a Link & Learn over at No Time for Flash Cards, but I can’t find the link, and don’t really feel like searching through a bazillion blog posts right now. The kids are cranky.

We haven’t really been doing much with letters. We talk about them all the time and talk about the sounds, and I write letters for E and show him how to write them, but there hasn’t really been a method to our letter madness. I have finally decided to make our letter learning a little more structured.

Today we made a “letter box” right now it is just an unused drawer from one of my storage drawers in the craft/preschool room, but it will eventually be replaced with something more permanent.

We taped the “letter of the week” on the box and found things that start with the letter “B” (since he doesn’t know how to write or read yet, we went mostly by sound, which will make C, S, and K tricky, but we will probably skip those and come back to them as sounds instead of individual letters).

To “prep” for finding things for the box, I first wrote the letter B on our whiteboard and then had him help me come up with things that start with B. I drew pictures of the things we named (bumblebee, bump, and ball). Then I sent my little Einstein to find things from his toy box that started with “B.” He walked off saying to himself “Buh, buh, buh, buh…” and then I heard, rather excitedly, “Bunkbed!” He ran back to me and said “Bunkbed starts with buh!!!” I congratulated him on his find, and then reminded him that his bunkbed would probably not fit in the “Buh box” so he would need to find some more things. He came back with some blocks, saying “I can make a bunk bed!” I redirected his thinking and mentioned that he had some blocks and I asked him what sound “block” starts with. He caught on pretty quick and said “Buh!! B!” and threw them in the box. He did pretty well after that and came back almost immediately with a baby bottle, which he actually referred to as a “bebida” which means “drink” in Portuguese but is the word we use for a sippy cup. Hey, good enough for me, so we put it in our box. He eventually came back with a book and a ball, and I helped him find a bowl and a bag. He found a boot on his own as we passed the shoe basket with our box on our way upstairs. And if you look closely in the box, you will find a colander, which does not start with B (neither do the other names for it – strainer or sieve) – but E didn’t pick it for that name. He put it in the box because, “It’s a bump!” Hey, who am I to tell him it’s not a bump?

We’ll keep the “Letter Box” upstairs where he can see it, and hopefully each day we can talk about the things that are in the box.

I know we’re making progress with letters and sounds, because he will constantly make a sound and ask me what letter makes that sound. I will take that as a sign that he understands what letters are for (they represent sounds). I never thought he would be asking me what letter stands for the sound he is making – I guess I always thought he would be asking me what sound a letter makes. It’s interesting how every child’s brain works a little differently. Either way, I’m super happy that he is learning sounds, and that he is associating them with letters. I think he may indeed be on the brink of learning to read. We’ll just keep working on getting all the sounds down, and then we’ll start putting together some combinations.

How did you learn letters and sounds? What letter/sound activities do you do with your kids?

Toys For Life

I just bought this IKEA toy at a thrift store for $2.50. Even at over 50% savings, that’s probably more than I should have paid for it – but every time we go to IKEA, it’s the one toy I have to pry my kids away from. I’ve been meaning to grab one, so I was thrilled when I found it at the thrift store.

I love non-plastic, whimsical looking toys for my kids. And I love toys that help their physical and mental development. These hammer toys are so simple, but they can (and do) actually get a lot out of them. Not to mention that they could hammer for hours on end, and it’s not nearly as annoying as them banging pots and pans (another favorite pastime).

I should write a post soon about toys, but for now, I’m just going to link up to a few of my favorite toy-related posts:

A Parent’s Tip Sheet for Owning Fewer Toys – by Josh Becker from becoming minimalist

Seeking Simplicity: Child’s Play is a Job Well Done – from Kitchen Stewardship

Classic Toys – by Tsh at SimpleMom

Why Fewer Toys Will Benefit Your Kids – by Josh Becker from becoming minimalist