09/05/2026
✨ Time Traveling Through the Sonoran Desert at Nicole's Little Academy! ✨
What an epic week of adventure! Our fearless co-pilots Theo and Juniper safely navigated our flight straight back to Arizona, landing us right in the historic heart of the ancient Huhugam world.
For those curious about our incredible historical hosts, the Huhugam (pronounced who-who-am!), often translated as "The Ones Who Came Before," are world famous master engineers of the desert. They built an astonishing, miles long network of irrigation canals that turned the dry desert soil into thriving agricultural fields long before modern machinery ever existed.
Our little learners stepped right into that rich history with some amazing hands on learning stations:
Yucca Weaving & Numbers: We watched women weave traditional cordage from yucca plant leaves, restocked them with prepared rope, and used it to practice counting.
Color Sorting: We mastered our colors by sorting vibrant bundles of colored yucca leaves.
Corn Grinding & Math: We visited a traditional metate station to grind corn and practice counting numbered corn kernels.
Prickly Pear Shape Practice: We collected desert fruit to fill our basket drop-pockets while working on our shapes.
Our Weekly Learning Lineup:
Letter Focus (Dot Markers): M is for Mesquite, P is for Prickly Pear, H is for Huhugam (the ones who came before us), and S is for Saguaro.
Storytime Favorites: Up and Down in the Dirt, Cactus Hotel, Fry Bread, and Way Out in the Desert.
Scissor Skills: Precision cutting practice featuring metates, prickly pear cacti, and historic Huhugam scenes.
Creative Crafts: The kids handcrafted coyote headbands, adorable quail crafts, painted clay bowls using authentic yucca plant paint brushes, and built their very own bobcat puppets.
