Home Decorating With Your Kids

Kids love to decorate for the holidays. My daughter helps string the lights outside every year, and we also decorate our Christmas tree.

Decorating your house for Chanukah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa is a great way for the family to spend time together. Here are just a few ideas to get you going.

An old but always successful idea: make paper chains. For Hanukah use blue, white, and silver paper. For Kwanza, use traditional African colors: black, red, gold, and green. For Christmas use red, white, and green, or be funky and do any color combination you like!

Food is symbolic in all holidays. One important symbol of Kwanzaa is a mkeka, a woven tablemat that symbolizes history. Your kids can make their own mkeka using construction paper. This can easily be made for your Christmas dinner or Hanukah feast as well.

To make the mkeka, have each child choose one color for the background -- for Kwanzaa you will want to use red, green, gold, and black paper. For Hanukah use blue, white, and/or silver. For Christmas use red, white, and green.

Fold this paper in half the long way. Then, make a slit from the bottom to approximately one inch to the top. Cut each slit about one inch apart until you get to about one inch to the other edge. Unfold the paper. Now you can cut strips with the other colors about one inch wide.

These can be woven in and out of the background paper alternating with the colors. Glue or tape the strips in place, and you are ready for your holiday feasts!

Candles are another important symbol during the holidays. Christmas uses the candles of Advent, Hanukah has the menorah, and Kwanzaa has the kinara. Kids often love the lighting of the candles, but are too young to actually handle the fire.

Here is a way they can participate in the "lighting" without the danger of candles:

• Take a large piece of felt, and with other colors of felt, cut out nine candles and any other special symbols and designs you like.
  
• Glue the candles and designs on to the background felt.
  
• Cut out nine small yellow or orange "flames" but do not glue these on.
  
• Cut a small hole in the upper-left and upper-right corners, and string the yarn through, for hanging.

Now each night your youngsters, in addition to watching the menorah candles being lit, can put a felt "flame" on their own menorah!

This translates easily to the Advent candles too. Cut out four candles using the colors you want for Christmas and each Sunday in December count down by adding another flame to the next candle. For the Kwanzaa kinara you will want to cut out candles in this order -- black (for unity), red (for self-determination), green (for collective work and responsibility), red (for cooperative economics), green (for purpose), red (for creativity), and green (for faith).