I'm so glad you asked this question. My son turned 19 months a couple days ago and is letter obsessed. I noticed about a week ago that he was pointing out words in his most favorite books as well as announcing the titles of his favorite books to me. I thought perhaps he was memorizing the titles or words based on the pictures (which would also be amazing given the volume of titles he seems to know) but it turns out he is starting to recognize some words. I used his alphabet puzzle to spell them and he recognized them out of context as well.
Lots of play in a literacy rich environment seems to be working at our house. I know many people here check out huge amounts of books from the library every week but I tried a different strategy. What we did was hit a big used book sale where all children's books were 25 cents and bought boxes upon boxes of books. We lined the perimeter of every room with books. He has about 75 favorites that we read daily. I guess this helps with sight word recognition because he sees the same books frequently?
I used to try to rotate books but he noticed when books were missing so now I just keep adding to them. That's why library books didn't work as well for us. He gets bent out of shape when we had to return one. I don't even want to know how many books are in my house!!
I've spent some time considering what to do from here. I have no idea! If you find something that works well please come back and post about it.
