As part of our summer travel to Oaxaca, Mexico, Sra. Brenna and I visited the village of San Martin Tilcajete, famous for it’s colorful woodcarvings known locally as “alebrijes.” We met artists at the studio of Jacobo and Maria Angeles, who transform rough pieces of copal wood into intricately painted wooden sculptures. The sixth graders learned about this time-consuming process, which can take up to a year to produce a large-scale piece, and designed their own fantasy creatures combined of two or more animals. We learned how to create an armature for paper mâché and used newspaper, tinfoil, and tape to build dimension. The students then covered their sculptures with paper mâché clay, and when they had dried to a hard finish they began painting brightly-colored patterns.