Kwanzaa for Kids Celebration

The seven days from December 26 to January 1, is celebrated as Kwanzaa by the African-American community to celebrate both their heritage and shared community values.  Each day a principle is upheld and celebrated.  These seven principles include: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.  Clearly, these are universal values that all children can learn from during the holiday season.

Each day discuss the principle and what it means for your family and children.  You can also have some fun with the celebration by doing activities that embrace these principles, i.e. write a story about being determined, make a poster that shows ways of being responsible in your neighborhood, feed the homeless one day, set up a small business to earn money, e.g. sell hot chocolate!  Each day a new activity can be done to embrace the principles.  The kids can even determine their own activities after you have discussed the principle.

Other activities include making beaded necklaces, playing African folk music, making paper candlesticks and writing a principle on each one.

A fun food to prepare to celebrate the season, which ends with a large feast on New Year’s Eve, is fried bananas. Yummy and easy to make!

For more ideas, check out Kwanzaa on the Net too! Amazon actually has a fairly varied selection of decorations and other items for Kwanzaa.

And unrelated to Kwanzaa, but still relevant, does anyone know of a good source of party goods that depict African-American children?  Birthday in a Box does have a couple patterns, shown here, for both a boy and girl, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject!