Making Your Own Kinara for Kwanzaa

Around the holiday known as Kwanzaa, Kinara's are very important objects to have at the dinner table. Not only do they symbolize the African heritage, they represent the 7 principles of Kwanzaa. While hand made Kinara's are pretty expensive to come by, you can make your own for little or less than nothing just using products around your home.

Kinara Materials: Shoe Box

7 empty Paper Towel Rolls

Red, Green and Black spray paint

Tissue Paper (red, yellow and orange to symbolize fire)

Scissors

Pen or Pencil

Construction Paper

Step 1: Before you begin, make sure you have all of your materials laid out in front of you. Once you ensure everything is there, get the top from the shoe box and begin to trace circle on it using the towel rolls as your guideline. Gently trace around the circles on the top of the shoe box. Make sure you trace 7 circles before finishing this step.

Step 2: Once you've traced all of you circles, take the scissors and carefully cut out the circles. If you're doing this with your child, make sure they are supervised at all times during this step. Once you have cut out all of the holes, set the shoebox and its top to the side.

Step 3: The next step is to take your 3 paints and paint 3 towel rolls green, 3 red and 1 black. It's best to paint the rolls in layers as oppose to spraying them heavily, they will take less time to dry by layering the paint. Once you have sprayed all of the rolls, put them to the side to dry.

Step 4: While the rolls are drying, take your construction paper and begin decorating the shoe box. Decorate it however you please, just make sure not to decorate the over the holes on the top of the shoe box cover. If your using glue to hold the construction paper in place as oppose to tape, set aside and allow to dry for a couple of minutes.

Step 5: Get all of the red and green rolls and snip about an inch off the top of all of them. The goal here is to make the black roll the tallest one of them all. Trim all of the other rolls until they are the same size and place them in the holes in the top of the shoe box. Make sure you group them together the right way meaning, 3 red on the left, 3 green on the right and black in the middle.

Step 6: If the rolls have a little trouble going in the holes, wiggle them around until they fit firmly in the holes. After you have all of the rolls in, place the cover back on the shoe box and make sure it's secure.

Step 7: The final step is to add the tissue paper accordingly. Grab a sheet of red, orange and yellow tissue paper and crumble it all up together. Once you've crumbled the colors together, insert them into each one of the rolls. Mix and match the tissue paper as you please in order to cater to your specific taste! Once all of the rolls are filled, you're done! You can now enjoy your own homemade Kinara!