DIY Pendulum for Block Demolition Fun

Watch any two or three year old and you will see that knocking a stack of blocks over is half the fun of building the tower in the first place.

Today I helped the children built a simple wrecking ball so they could take turns sending it crashing into their block towers.

We used items we had in the house.  The children helped brainstorm the materials we needed. We secured a hockey stick to a chair with bungee cords. The kids figured out how to wrap the bungee cords with a little help.

At first we tried using a skipping rope but settled on this rope that fit through the hockey stick hole better. Securing the ball was very difficult for the children until I gave them this net from a toy Safari Set.  It didn’t take them long to figure out how to put the ball inside and tie the rope to the net.

Building the tower was a group effort.

We measured to make sure the tower was tall enough that it would be knocked over.  Then, we lowered the ball and retied the rope because the children wanted the whole tower to topple over in one big crash.

One child extended the ball back to the end of the rope and let it go!

Success!  The kids jumped up and down and cheered!  And then they rebuilt the tower and knocked it down again and again and again.

Happy Demolition Everyone!