Photo Credit: Mike Harding, Location: Exploratorium

The human brain is nothing short of amazing. I realize that as I’m working with my daughter on reading, moving from assembling letters into words and then ultimately to word recognition. That’s why most people can, minimal effort, read through the words on the image above and make sense of them – because you’re not literally reading the letters, you’re performing pattern recognition at the word level. No wonder texting is second nature, we can all figure out “C U l8r.”

And, if you haven’t visited the Exploratorium with your kids (or grandkids) you’re missing out. Well worth the time and effort.