2023 September Featured Book: Ages 3-4

Mi Casa Is My Home   by Laurenne Sala

“Bienvenidos a Lucia’s home. Lucia lives in her casa with her big, loud, beautiful familia, and she’s going to show you around!”

Developmental Markers

• Becoming grounded in family’s cultural ways: language, rules about behavior, how emotions are expressed, gender norms.

• Identifying and matching people according to “racial” physical characteristics and groups, but often confused about complexities of group characteristics.

• Over-generalizing and making incorrect associations about differences based on his/her limited experience and limited ways of processing information.

Activities

• Lucia’s family speaks in Spanglish—mixing some English words and some Spanish words in their conversation. No glossary or translation is provided in the book.  If you do not know Spanish yourself, this Youtube read aloud video of the book is a perfect solution.  The woman  reading it speaks both Spanish and English fluently, and she slips in the English translation for the Spanish words seamlessly into the story.                                                                                    

• Meet the author Laurenne Sala in this short clip as she explains what moved her to write about her casa, and what she hopes the story inspires you to do.

• So much to talk about while reading this book!  Do you notice things that are similar to your house, family, toys, activities?  What things make your house and your family a little different that Lucia’s?

• Ask your child, “Could you give someone a tour of your house/casa?  What spots are special to you?”

• What people are special in your life?  What are your favorite things to do as a family or with friends?