The Country Village Montessori School Elementary experience begins as the child moves into the second plane of development starting around age six. The elementary years are commonly referred to as the ages between 6 – 12 and 1st through 6th grades. This is a time of profound cognitive shifts. Though a relatively stable period of development, it is a time where foundations of higher order thinking and learning take place, root, and grow. Many have called this stage of development as the age of reason. The hallmark of the second stage is the development and use of Imagination. Questions of Why? Where? How? and to what Purpose? begin to enter their thinking and replace the “what’s that?” questions of the first stage of development. It is also a time from moving from concrete to abstract and to start to develop a deep sense of morality and justice.