3V0977.01 Reading words to Peggy: unintended instruction

Peggy has been lately enjoying Richard Scary’s “Best Word Book Ever.”
She brought it to me today and asked me to read her the words (in a
general sense) “Read these words?” I read the title, etc. then began to
read the labels accompanying objects on the cover. “This word says
‘rabbit’. This word says ‘farmer’.” etc. I realized I was giving her
instruction, explicitly, in what a word is. I continued for about ten
minutes by which time Peggy was pointing to individual words and
asking “what does this word mean?” I conclude she has made a
primary identification of words as discrete clusters of letters.

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