Alebrijes: Create Your Own Spirit Animal

Creating your own Alebrije in Keynote using shapes and drawing tools can be a fun, creative project! Alebrijes are colorful Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical creatures, often combining features of different animals. Here’s a five step guide for designing your Alebrije.

•  
  
• Open Keynote to a basic template and delete text boxes. 
• Open the shape menu, tap Animals and look at all your choices. Let’s do a pick 3…one animal/creature from the land, one from water and one from the air. (I chose rabbit, octopus, dragonfly.)
• Add your first animal, then your second and third. Consider how you want them to connect. Under the arrange menu you can rotate and move them front t back. HINT: You can also remove parts of creatures by overlaying another shape, tap both to select and choose subtract. 
• Open your drawing tools and give it LOTS of color and pattern. 
• Create a simple background, land, water or air, then add a text box to type in it’s name. Share!

Connect across curriculum with cultural and historical studies. Have student write stories about their alebijre for an ELA connection. Animal adaptations or patterns in nature for Science. Connect to Math by using shapes and angles while building the Alebrije in Keynote, incorporating concepts like symmetry, rotation, and scaling.

Download attached Keynote for a brief history and full instructions including a video tutorial.

Can't wait to hear how you and your students use this resource to boost global and cultural connections while embracing creativity.

Attachments

Alebrijes.key

Download  (19.6 MB)