As simple as adding a puppet...

We love borrowing puppets from the library and often we'll get books that accompany whichever animal we're getting.
Puppets can make stories come to life. Recently we read an adorable book called, "Emma's Turtle" by Eve Bunting, with a turtle puppet. In the story, the pet turtle gets out of his pen and imagines he is traveling to all sorts of strange countries, when in reality, he has never left the backyard. It's an adorable tale, and we used it to review and explore our geography afterward. We were able to take our turtle puppet from the page to the map, to the globe, to our backyard.