Part of the celebration of Kwanzaa is spending time with family and enjoying good food and conversation together. Making placemats and table decorations are one way to celebrate Kwanzaa as a family. Use sheets of 8 inch by 10 inch pieces of paper and 1 inch strips to weave a placemat. Fold the 8 inch by 10 inch paper in half and cut lines from the fold toward the open edge, and stop cutting 1 inch from edge. Cut several lines, 1 inch apart. Open paper and weave 1 inch strips through slits in paper. Use your family's favorite colors to create placemats. Use leftover 1 inch strips to create napkin rings, wrap around vases for the table or create name tags for plates.
Kwanzaa celebrates family and its unity. Create a book with your family where each person creates a page to signify them and then a page where everyone takes part in the creation. Use old pictures to cut and paste into pages, paints, markers, pencils and crayons and 8 inch by 10 inch pieces of paper. Have each family member work on their page at the same time and then when finished, write a paragraph about what family means to them and what is important to them about family. Work together on final page creating a unity page showing the entire family together in an activity they enjoy. Share pages with each other and put the pages together into a book to enjoy on the next Kwanzaa.
Each day of Kwanzaa a candle is lit in celebration of the holiday. A kinara is a special candle holder used for the candles during Kwanzaa. There are certain colors associated with Kwanzaa such as black in representation of the people, red for their struggles and green for the future. Using old egg cartons, cut 7 cups out of a 12 cup carton and paint with black paint. Paint 7 tongue depressors 3 red, 1 black and 3 green with tempera paint and allow to dry. Press tongue depressors into top of cups, with open cup facing down, until they are firmly in place. Cut out flames from construction paper using yellow, red and orange paper, and glue on ends of tongue depressors. Each day of Kwanzaa, add a new kinera candle. Traditionally a black candle is the middle kinara candle, with the red candles on one side and green on the other.