Have you ever felt frustrated, while giving your child some directions or instructions to follow? At times you notice that he follows either first part or the last part of the instructions given, or you see him giving you a blank look when multiple instructions are given.

You also want your child to move ahead of need based communication and engage in a ‘to and fro’ communication. But he hardly waits to listen or even while trying to talk to you doesn’t wait for your response.

Listening to a direction, understanding it, assimilating it, especially if there are more than one direction and then executing it, involves a lot of steps involving many cognitive skills. You can say we started “Direction Giving”, when we used to do action based poems like, “head, shoulders, knees and toes”. The child was
listening to auditory instructions and following you step by step. Matching his actions to the words. This I would say would be a prerequisite for your child to later give directions to others or engage in
conversations.

In language when somebody asks a way for example, about a shop or any other place. We create a mental map of the route in our mind, so our instructions would sound something like, “go straight, then turn right
you will see a park, walk along the park then take the first left , then so
and so shop is right at the corner.”

So, while giving instructions you are imagining the whole route in your
mind. This is an essential skill for a two-way communication. You are working on memory retrieval, visualising the whole space and route. You are also pausing to check if the person is understanding what you are
saying.

How do we teach direction giving to our children? Assuming they have a basic grasp of language and they know the basic nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives we then start working on listening and following simple instructions. This first needs to be practiced between an adult and the child. The adult giving an instruction and the child listening to it and following the instructions given step by step. We start with one
step and slowly move on to two to three steps instructions. Make sure that you are giving as much as possible a verbal command and the child is listening to it and following.
Example can be you can tell the child to stack different coloured cups and make a tower as per the instructions given, step by step. Slowly you can reverse the role by letting the child give instructions either to you or his
friend.

Examples of direction giving games is covered in this link of our YouTube Channel,
https://youtu.be/8OPUw8Bfwlw?feature=shared
If the child can read the next level would be to read and follow the written instructions. This is an excellent way to teach comprehension skills too to the children. Attached are few worksheets I have made initially you can read the instructions to the child and let him follow. Later let the child
read and do such types of worksheets independently, if he is at the
reading level.
Sharing some such worksheets I have made.
(Image courtesy Google)
You can also get more on direction giving from the following websites.
1.https://15worksheets.com/worksheet-category/givingdirections/
2. Edqueries.com
3. twinkl.co

Read out the instructions to the child, one by one and wait for him/her to follow them
1. Draw a kite on the tree.
2. Draw a ball under the tree.
3. Draw a square on the left side and a triangle on the right
side of the tree.
4. Colour the square brown and the triangle green.
5. Draw clouds above the tree

Read out the instructions to the child, one by one and wait
for him/her to follow them.
1. Draw a sun next to the rainbow.
2. Colour the clouds blue.
3. Draw two birds between the blue clouds.
4. Draw a ball near the boy.
5. Colour the boys cap yellow, T shirt blue and shoes
purple

Author Simmi Vasu