INSPIRE CHANGE
OUR MISSION
STEM LEARNING
Nuestra Casa fills a gap in early STEM learning materials for bilingual households speaking Spanish and English. Overall, Latino involvement in STEM across academic levels is low, particularly for women, and we wanted to provide role models for children that show STEM professionals that look like them.
Ultimately, we wanted to create a story that readers would enjoy and be inspired by.
SPANISH AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE SPEAKERS
We wrote this book for young children who speak both English and Spanish or want to learn either language! This book is for multilingual households to encourage families to read together! We also wrote this book for educators who wish to provide early STEM education in multiple languages, and for outreach coordinators who would like to pair a book with outdoor activities, like salamander hunts!
A SENSE OF BELONGING
Our goal was to stimulate a sense of belonging and sense of stewardship for the environment. The book illustrates and speaks to why amphibians are important, what threats they face, and what individuals can do to help. It provides readers a chance to see themselves in the people who work with nature, amphibians, and in science! Ultimately, we hope that our book will spark a curiosity for the natural world and genuinely help them feel part of it.
FOSTERING STEWARDSHIP
As the next generation, children will be the ones who protect and care for our environment. We wanted to write a book that helps to nurture this sense of stewardship at an early age, by showing them how, even as children, they can have a lasting impact on the places around them. These impacts can be felt by all that live in the environment, from people to frogs and salamanders!
INTRODUCTION TO ECOLOGY
"I became an ecologist long before I had even heard the word" is a perfect encapsulation of the feeling we wanted to capture with this story. We truly believe that all of us are innately curious about how the world works at an early age, and we wanted to provide the very beginning of understanding what ecology was with this book. Our story shows how amphibians impact the world around them and begins to plant the seeds of a long lifetime learning about the connnections that make up an ecosystem.
GENERATING AN INTEREST IN AMPHIBIANS
Amphibians are the single most threatened group of animals across the world. Facing population declines and habitat loss, we wanted our readers to be interested in their unique life history, and important role in the ecosystem. We hope that after reading our book, readers will want to find amphibians around where they live!