It
is the age of intensive intellectual development. In some countries children
start school at this age, in some they continue but at this age the demands
become much more serious. If before children learn general information
about world mostly in games and fun activities now their study is more
theoretical. They begin to learn basics of sciences and this influences
the intellectual development a lot, logical thinking, memory, imagination.
Study becomes the main activity (in previous period game was the main activity) and children spend considerable part of time at school.
For some children
it becomes a problem to spend a lot of time at school and follow serious
rules of behaviour at the lessons.
Now children have to study more at home too doing their homework and they learn to organize and plan their time.
Communication with teachers and classmates begin to play important role in the life. Teachers now play the role of important adults too and children start to respect their opinions and views as important.
Relations with other children move to another level. If
earlier their communication was based
on definite activity or game, now it becomes more theoretical, children
begin to communicate on different more abstract topics and discuss issues
not connected with immediate activity. The period is the beginning of
building first serious relations. Children learn the concept of friendship.
By the end of the period the opinion of friends begins to play very important role, as important as adults’ and sometimes even more.
Moral values begin to interest children more and
more. And at this period it is very important that parents and teachers
take closer attention to this issue, because children can adopt values
of friends that might be not very good.
Speech at this age has further development. Study at school helps children to rapidly enrich their speech with new vocabulary. Grammatical structure of speech develops too and by the end of the period their speech is as grammatically correct as adults’ one or close to it.