Starting to recognize words

Do you wonder how a child starts to recognize words?

After pointing to and saying the same word over and over, they recognize it.
He says Mom when he sees Mom.
They recognize when the word they say is not Mom
They still use the picture for the meaning of unknown words.

Now they are ready for the next step. As they are reading and pointing to the same word over and over, they start to recognize it. When they see it again in a new book, they think that looks just like that word “my” in the other book. Gradually a number of words are learned. These become the “anchor” for the child as he reads. He thinks about saying “Mom” where it says “Mom” and “I” where it says I. Now they have something definite to look for and they see that reading means looking at the print and seeing words they know.
Of course they still need the support of the picture for the words they do not know. They are going to need this for a long time. It helps them think of what is happening in the story. We want the picture to show so they can glance at it when they come to a word they do not know. Our reading books are chosen very carefully so this is easy to do. They are not ready to try reading without pictures yet. That will come later. So at this stage, we leave the picture plainly visible. Since we are still asking them to point, they must look mostly at the print anyway. We have achieved our first goal. Later I will talk about when they need to stop pointing, but not yet.