The most sucessful student are the ones who come into elementary school with the basic knowlege that he/she is learning to master for the next six years.  The acheive this you have to start the learning process young.  During the first five years of the childs life he/she will learn how to learn before that child even has a chance to get into public or private schooling.  So it is most important that the home life instills learning opportunities such as:

television that educates- believe it or not Don't forget the lyrics is a good one along with other game shows, it helps the child to learn how to reach in his/her memory bank to find an an answer with limited resources; Discovery and History channels as well as PBS and other educational children shows help too

Games- purchase and play games with your child that makes him/her think

Social networking- allow your children to participate with children on teams and play with friends, this allows your child to learn to work with people their age and solve problem and learn to see things in other peoples eyes and his/her very own, multiple ways of thinking help a child succeed

When a child gets to Junior High School, he or she will have began developing a mind of his or her own now. Decision making skills will be optimal and this is where influence is is beginning to not take such a toll on the child. He or she will now have to learn prioritising, organization, culture, and take the basic knowlege and build on it. The biggest change for this child will be hormonal but academically he/she knows what he/she can or can not do. Work ethic vs intelligence will be questioned because he or she will now have to multitask and take responsibility for his/her own task. This may be difficult for the child and you as a parent, friend, teacher, or sibling can just encourage but there is not much more you can do but stress the importance of academics to the child. This is a point when the child does not take into consideration just how important this stage is to his or her academic career.

As soon as the child is in junior high, work towards the advance placement courses, in elementary the teachers can refer a student to these courses as well so take that in consideration.  The child needs to stand out academically as much as possible.

Keep the child busy as much as possible to keep the opportunities for trouble away

These are the years when you can basically consider the personality of the child developed.  He/She will mature a little more but not much more unless something drastic or traumatic happens.  This is when the child's is investing the most into his/her career.

This is when he/she should be excelling as much as possible:

from AP (advance placement) classes to a IB (International Bachelorate) program; take as many tech classes and pre professional classes as offered; apply for scholarships and consider every move you many in life as something that will be on your resume; volunteer as much as possible and document it fully and have it signed off

Take SAT and preparatory PSAT as many times as you can before you get to college so your score can be as high as possible; every point make the difference from no scholarship to a couple thousand dollars;

Make back up plans for your career; hardly ever to people stick to their original program so plan your courses in high school as such; and Apply to lots of colleges so that you get several letters to make the college you want compete for you.