For elementary school children everywhere, the end of the library’s summer reading program signals the beginning of the end. Even though it’s the start of August, with temperatures climbing well above 100 and 95 percent humidity, children across the country are hearing the death knells of summer.

The end of the summer reading program also means something else to concerned parents and teachers: a month wherein students have no steady exposure to literature. After which they will be plunged back into the classroom, and are expected to have retained and be able to use information and skills learned in the previous school year.

This is the time where parental involvement is crucial in childhood education.

Parents, it falls to you to encourage your children to keep reading, to ensure they don’t regress or lose skills that teachers have so painstakingly instilled in their students.

With over a month left before school starts, and the library’s incentives to read coming to a close, the kids need a bit of a push to continue to develop their literacy skills and to apply things they’ve learned in the classroom to real life situations.

This independent exploration is a crucial aspect of their academic development, and one that parents must work in tandem with teachers in order to ensure that children are actually learning and internalizing skills, rather than just memorizing facts to be regurgitated during testing periods.

So stock up on books, brush up on your sight words and re-familiarize yourself with fifth grade math. Your kids, and their teachers, need your help in the preparing for the new year.

They kids will complain now, but will thank you for it later.