Wot 'e said...When you realise that one's offspring would rather learn that eat, that's a significant moment.
Reading time is really important.
Using a stencil and file cards, I put individual words on the cards in order to make up simple sentences and nursery rhymes. As soon as I got home after work my 3yo son would say "do words, daddy!", and we'd spend ten or fifteen minutes 'doing words'. Sometimes I'd swap two words round, and he never failed to spot it. "Silly daddy!", I'd say. When he started at infant school he had a reading age of 9. In the end I wound up with about a thousand words on cards, but by then he was a competent reader.
When I was about 3yo, I was 'helping' my dad to do some DIY. I must have been getting in the way, because he asked me to go and get him a gimlet. Two minutes later and I appeared with it...much to everyone's surprise. 'Sponge' is a good word for the ability of young children to soak up knowledge.