DIY Donkey Kong Console Shelves

Donkey Kong

 Console Shelves

Our older kids are home from school and out come the piles of papers and books and they are spread all over our dining room table while I am trying to prep dinner and set the table. I am left two choices, one:  if I set food on the table as it is finished something might get knock over onto their homework, two: I can wait until they are done to set things on the table which results in kids snitching parts of dinner as they are passing in and out of the kitchen when I am not looking. I sigh and asked (again)”Why don’t you use the desk? We bought a desk for you to do your homework on.” The kids respond as usual,” There’s no room. The consoles are all over the desk.”

                            

This conversation has happened I don’t know how many times and the kids are right. Getting them a desk was good but if we use all that space for something else they can’t really use their desk for homework. This was the first organization problem I wanted to fix but the curtains needed to come first.  Now that they are done it is time to work on getting those consoles off their desk.

Step#1

Measurements

We measured the space between the TV and the curtains. We also measured the how big each console was then we decided to make all the shelves the same size as was needed for our largest console.  We also measured how much vertical space we would need in between each shelf. We used our Skylanders portals as our gauge, we put our tallest Skylander on top of the portal, which was Ninjini, then added a little cushion on top of that so we would be able to take the Skylanders on and off without difficulty.

Step#2

Cutting

I cut out all five shelves for the consoles to rest on with our jig saw.  I also cut a façade for the front face of the shelves. In the Donkey Kong game things are tilted. If we were to make our shelves tilted then the consoles would be in danger of falling off all the time. The look of tilted shelves is not worth the cost of replacing consoles.  So we decided that we could just tilt the front facade of the shelves and have the shelves themselves be level on the wall. If you are curious about dimensions, I cut our shelves 12” long and 14” wide so that the longer distance of 14” is starting from the wall going out into the room. The facades are 12” long x 2” tall.

Step#3

Painting part 1

After everything was cut I took black spray paint and coated one side of each the shelves and facades. I waited four hours then flipped it over and coated the other sides with spray paint. This process took a couple of days because I wanted to make sure that the shelves look even in color and were very shiny. Which necessitated lots of coats of spray paint.

Step#4

Construction

I then looked at the images of the original Donkey Kong video game and at the order that the beams are tilted in. I tried to replicate that with the facades I screwed onto the shelves I cut.

Step#5

Painting part 2, Cutting and Gluing

I then took some Popsicle sticks I had purchased for another project and cut the ends off. I then painted these red and outlined the façades in red sticks to represent the beams and hot glued them on.Next I placed more red painted sticks against the outline I had glued on and marked with a red colored pencil the angles I would need to cut for it to fit in between the outlines of the beams. I cut those angles and hot glued them in. I kept repeating this process till I had gone all the way across the façades for all the shelves.

Step#6

Mounting and Painting part 3

My husband then took L braces which came with wall anchors and placed the anchors and L braces on the wall. He made sure that he left the distance we had determined would be needed vertically in between the shelves. I love how careful he is, it’s a talent of his.  Then He set the shelves on top of the L braces and screwed the braces to the shelves.

I then painted the L braces with black acrylic paint on the under sides of the shelves and blue acrylic paint on the part attached to the walls to make the braces disappear as much as I could manage.

Step#7

Painting part 4, Cutting and Gluing

My husband then placed the consoles on the shelves.

I then took more Popsicle sticks and painted them teal on both sides to start making the ladders for connecting the levels.  I looked at my Donkey Kong image again to see where the ladders were in the game at level 1.  I then cut off the rounded edges of the ladders and did any touch up of paint necessary. Then I hot glued them in place on top of the façade.I did have to change some of the placement of the ladders because I didn’t want to block where the disc trays slide open.  So I had to accept it being as close as I could manage to level 1 of Donkey Kong.

Step#8

Donkey Kong

We have a Donkey Kong that came with our recent Skylanders game we bought and my husband thought it would be best place at the top.  It was a really nice extra touch that I had not thought of that I really liked.

Materials                                                             Cost

OSB boards- used on the shelves- left over 

from the Skylanders valence boxes-                   0.00

2x2 boards- used for the facades 

-from our daughter’s broken bunk bed-               0.00

Black spray paint-some left over from 

chomp chain curtain tie back I made 1 ½ can 

and 3 cans new-                                                  3.00

Red paint-                                                              .50

Teal paint-                                                              .50

 Hot glue- already had                                          0.00

Screws- left over from another project                 0.00

L braces- we bought for another project 

we didn’t do so I am not sure whether to 

count this as a cost so ….                                   20.70

Total Cost____________________________________   

                                                                            24.00

Doctor Who Homeschool Unit

Doctor Who Homeschool Unit

My husband and I like to watch the TV show Doctor Who. It has a complicated plot, it is funny, no nudity and there is not massive amounts of swearing which is a refreshing change from most shows.  We often discuss together the characters and speculate where the plot is going.

As we have done this our kids have been very curious about the show. However, if you have seen the show you know that it can be very scary at times, for example any weeping angels episode. We decided that the kids could watch some of the episodes but we would have to very careful about which ones they get to see, no extremely  scary ones right before bed, one of us is always with them when they are watching and they watch it with all the lights on.

As a result of watching some of the episodes  “Spiderman Jr.” wanted a Doctor Who homeschool unit.  I was hesitant to say yes. He has watched the fewest episodes and I didn’t know if I would have enough source material he could see that wasn’t too scary. I did eventually decide he could have a Doctor Who homeschool unit. Here is what I came up with from images that were available that allowed for noncommercial reuse.  If you print these don’t sell them, the people who shared their images did not give permission to sell them.

Math

 

He kept forgetting which ones he had counted, 

so we had to add check marks above each one. 

Kind of funny that he kept forgetting.

The Silence- write the tally marks worksheet

Silence Tally Mark Worksheet

The Silence- count and clip cards.

The Silence count and clip cards

I created this to help him work on how to use and count tally marks.

Bow ties with cubes

 

 

 

 

 

I printed out a template for making a paper cube and cut it out. After that I traced the template onto black construction paper I cut them out.  Then “Spiderman Jr.” and I glued them together. I cut out blue numbers and glued them onto the cubes.  I then cut out enough red bow ties each box. He then placed the same number of red bow ties in the cube as the number that was on the outside of the cube.

Van Goph Color by number worksheet

Sunflower Color by number

We were focusing on adding the numbers 10-13 into the numbers he is better at recognizing more consistently so I only had these number. More numbers could be added because there are far more colors in the original painting.

Science

We built a sonic screwdriver. We spent a couple of days on this and he had a great time.

Art

Cubist Bow Tie coloring page

We watched some documentaries on Van Goph and Pablo Picasso. We talked about cubism and I made a cubist inspired Doctor Who coloring page for us to color together as we talked about that style of art.

English

Alphabet letter matching

I created a card matching game where he had to match the first letter to the villain or companion of the Doctor. We also worked on identifying vowels and constants.

Doctor Item Spelling Cards

I also created cards were he had to match identical items. One card had the words spelled in it and the other was blank. He had to look at the card that had the correct spelling and write the same letter on the blank card to practice writing his letters.

History

Match the Sonic to the Doctor cards

For fun I had him match cards I had made of the doctors sonic screw drivers to the doctor who used that sonic screwdriver. It was a chance to work on timelines and understanding that things come in a certain order.

“Spideman Jr.” and I had a lot of fun doing this unit. After he finished each day’s work we watched the episode that went with what we had worked on that day.