CANYON, TEXAS -- To almost every child, summer means vacations, pool time, sleeping in, well pretty much anything but doing school work. But educators are encouraging kids to keep up their reading during the summer months.

In fact, studies show students who read during the summer return for the new school year at the same level and better prepared. For those students who don't, they regress and fall behind. Because of that,Lakeview Elementary is now offering it's first summer reading program at their library. Pronews 7 takes a look at this program in this week's Region 16 Spotlight Education.

"We realize some of our kids don't have the transportation to go into either Amarillo or Canyon to their book programs. So we thought it would be a good idea, since this is a central location and our school is basically the center of our community, we decided why not have one here to encourage them to read throughout the summer to keep their reading skills up," said Georgie Cornelson, Lakeview Elementary Volunteer.

For this month and some of July, students at Lakeview Elementary (click here for a map) have the opportunity to go to their library for story time. A chance students and their parents to enjoy reading. The school says it also hopes it will encourage both students and parents to read together over the summer months.

"If you will dedicate 20 minutes a day to read to your child or listen to your child read to you, you will see much improvement. That's one of the most important things you can do, a gift you can give to a child is the ability to read," said Cornelson.

She adds, that 20 minutes a day, even helps create a special bond between you and your child.

"My daughter and I read books together then we have things in common. We can talk about it or something will come up and we'll be like, "oh that reminds us of that story or reminds us of a character," so that's something we have in common and it opens up conversations."

For students, they say they love to use their imagination during story time.

"My favorite part about reading is cause whenever you read you can think about how you would like them to look if they don't give a lot of details, but if it's a movie you can't think about how they look."

For parents at Lakeview Elementary student, the story time schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Thursday, July 21, 2011 9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

But if your child doesn't go to Lakeview Elementary, no worries.Amarillo and Canyon's Libraries have plenty of summer reading programs to offer.

Click here for a schedule of events for Canyon's Library.

Click here for a schedule of events for Amarillo's Libraries.