castle+builder

Materials and Tools: Scissors, tape or glue, markers or crayons, paper, a PC with printer and Build a Medieval Castle free software. Helpful: a large piece of paper or cardboard or several sheets of paper fastened together to go underneath the castle; paper clips to hold parts together during construction; toothpicks and colored paper to make pennants to put on the towers; index cards.
 * Instructions for** //**Build a Medieval Castle**//

General Rules: CUT on the heavy lines. FOLD on the dashed lines. Where there is a blank space inside the cut lines, instead of stone pattern, it means that another piece is meant to be glued over it (this does not apply to the shed). Tabs that are meant to be folded are separated from the rest of the piece by a dashed line. Fold all tabs away from you. Hints: The walls and towers are different heights. Make sure the bottom edges match up. Paper clips, especially the plastic ones, will hold glued pieces together while they dry. They will also hold pieces in the proper alignment while you tape them.

Print out the pieces: For the basic castle you will need to print out these pieces:

Tower 4 Front Wall 2 Side Wall 2 Gate 1 1 Gate 2 1 Back Wall 1 1 Back Wall 2 1 Keep 1 1 Keep 2 1 Keep Top 4 Shed 1 Shed Roof 1 There are two Keep Tops on a page, so you only need to print two copies for four tops. If you make a mistake, or change your mind, just print out new copies of those pieces.

Color the pieces first. It is easier to color the walls with paint or markers since there are large areas to color. It is also authentic to leave the walls white, since castles were sometimes white-washed after they were built, to make them seem even more impressive. The walls and towers could be any stone color. There were small holes left in the wall from building (timbers were inserted to hold up the scaffolding as the wall went up); ivy and small plants, like the ones you see in rock gardens might grow in these holes.

Cut Out the pieces on the heavy lines. Note that the shed and the Keep Tops have extra cut lines that are not outlines. Cut the doors on the top and one side so that they open and shut. The gatehouse has doors which are cut in the middle, and they hinge on each side. There are doors in the towers, the gate house, the keep and the back (postern) door in the castle wall. You may also want to cut the doors in the shed. You can cut holes for the windows if you wish--use small scissors.

Assembly: Towers: Start with the four towers, rolling the pieces and gluing or taping them to cover the blank area with no stone pattern. The door and window in each tower should face into the castle courtyard, and the narrow slits should face out. Put your four towers into the shape of a rectangle, and decide which is the front of your castle. The front and back are longer than the sides.

Walls: The 2 Side Walls have small, equal blank areas on each end. Fold these away from you as you look at the printed side. Tape or glue each of these side walls to a tower, so that each wall has one tower on each end of it. You should have 2 separate pieces of a wall with two towers flanking it.

by:Freddy S. & Antonio P.and Brian Ramirez