Total Time 1 hour
by Amanda Formaro
Celebrate the season of Kwanzaa with this fun and easy to make kinara. The colors of the candles represent the people (black), their struggles (red), and the future (green). Learn more about this celebration on our main Kwanzaa page. Be sure to explore our Kwanzaa coloring pages, crafts, clip art and printables.
What you'll need
- Egg carton, you need 7 egg cups
- 7 jumbo craft sticks
- Yellow and orange construction paper
- Acrylic paint: green, red, black, and brown
- Glue
- Scissors
- Paint brush
- Hot glue gun
Helpful Tip:
For smaller children, instead of making the flames from two colors of construction paper, simply use yellow and let them draw on the orange part with crayons or markers. During each day of Kwanzaa, a new candle is lit. The first is the black candle, followed by the green and the red, alternating a different one each day. Insert your kinara candles as your parents light the real kinara. Craft foam is a great substitute for construction paper if you are running low.
How to make it
Cut 12 place egg carton down the middle to create 2 lengths of six cups. Cut one of those lengths in half, creating 2 lengths of three cups each. Cut one egg cup from the other length of 6. You will need the 2 sets of 3 and the single cup, set aside the other cups for another project.
Trim the egg cup edges with scissors to clean them up and so that it will stand evenly, cup opening pointed down. Hot glue the single egg cup between the two three piece egg cups to create one long 7 cup piece. Ask a grown up to use a pair of scissors to carefully poke a slit into the top of each egg cup.
Paint the egg cups brown. Let dry.
For the craft sticks, paint one black, three green and three red. Paint both sides and add another coat if you prefer. Let dry.
Cut out simple flame shapes from yellow construction paper, large enough to fit at the top of each craft stick. Cut out smaller versions from orange construction paper. You will need 14 of each color.
Glue the yellow flames to the tops of the craft stick candles, one on each side so that the project can be viewed on both sides. Glue the orange flames to the yellow flames.
Insert the craft stick candles into the egg cup slits that someone helped create for you in step 2. The black candle goes in the middle, the red candles on one side and the green on the other.
