Tell stories.

Read stories. These don’t need to all be for the kids. It’s good for your kids to see you enjoying books.

Read aloud to your kids (Even after they can do it themselves).

Enjoy movies as a family.

Read books in tandem; when someone starts reading a series that they are really excited about, go ahead and read it too.  This is especially fun with series when your kids are a little older. We’ve done this with Harry Potter, The Divine Comedy, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, The Hunger Games and The 39 Clues. It’s great fun and leads to wonderful conversations. It’s not always easy to get everyone together for a read-aloud, but tandem-reading can build momentum and excitement about a series. (E-books can make this extra easy to pull off.)

Frequent your local library… and book store.

Buy books. Yes, libraries are wonderful, but you need to have good books inhabit your home. Also, we should support good movies and good books as we are able. Movies can make really wonderful gifts. It’s a lot of bang for your buck (many great movies can be found in the $5 range) and doesn’t take up much space (we discard the original cases and store them in CD binders).