Doing it for the kids!

So, I got collared by the little man's teachers again. It seems that this terms theme is castles, and they asked me if I'd make them one. After a brief chat about want they wanted, me and little man got stuck in.

First off, we had a team meeting and decide what was going where, little man helped draw up the plans and the commissar modified them as she saw fit.

After the initial polystyrene earthworks were cut out, little man got stuck into sticking them down under the careful supervision of the commissar.

It didn't take long for things to start shaping up, it was at this point we realised that the towers of the gate house were going to be a bit big.

Work then started on the gatehouse, we have to be very careful when dad's cutting!

While dad cracks on with cutting, little man gets on with gluing the cut down towers of the gatehouse, he loves his gluing.

The backwall goes in first, along with the two cut down towers. We kept the plastic lids in the tubes to make the floors of the turrets.

Once they were dry, the spacers and the front wall sections were put on. Little man did a great job doing this.

After the basic wall and gatehouse sections were dry, we added the battlement floors, crenellations and the turret walls. The turret walls are just cardboard taped and glued in place.

We started to papa mache the whole structure, part of the brief was that it was going to have to be able to take a lot of hammer from a bunch of four year olds, and I know from experience that papa mache gives scenery a lot of durability.

We then put together the main keep and the donjon tower, adding struts to make it sturdy.

Little man got stuck into getting the top of the donjon ready for it's roof. It was at this point whilst typing this blog that I realised that perhaps I shouldn't have taken the piss out of my older brothers baldness so much ......

Then the roof went on, he's got a steady pair of hands for a four year old.

Work then continued on adding a roof to the keep, followed by the crenelations for the main keep roof, donjon and tower. We also added a basic bridge, a drawbridge would just have got trashed.

One of the last jobs was to add a ruined tower that I made using my new hot knife. This was to show the kids that even in the medieval times, people still recycled.

We finished off by going mad with the papa mache, and covering all the rock faces with plastoparis bandage. Once it was all dry, it ended up looking quite good.

Once that was all dry, we were done. The brief was that it had to be sturdy, which it was, it had to have a moat, battlements, gatehouse, keep and donjon, which were all covered. So overall, a good job that only took a week in total. They didn't want it painted as they wanted the kids to do that, so this was the end of the project for us, which was a bit of a shame as we both wanted to paint it.

Well, another term starts soon, I wonder what they have planned for us for the next term.