Five Playful Ways to Work on Listening and Following Directions

I recently got an email from a parent who was wondering how she could work on her son’s listening skills. As I was responding to her email I realized that many parents would benefit from this information- so I decided to make this into a post. There are many FUN ways that you can work on your child’s listening skills. My recommendations can be used with preschoolers through school age…just adjust the difficulty level to match your child’s ability level and then slowly increase the difficulty as they build their skills.

Simon Says

You know this age-old game, right? Someone is “Simon” and he tells everyone what to do by saying “Simon says….” However if he tells you what to do without saying “Simon says” prior to the directions-but you do it anyway- you’re out!

This game is all about having to listen and follow directions. But for kids who might already struggle with this skill, I have a few recommendations to make this game fun and motivating for your child:

• Rather than “Simon says” I recommend changing it up to a more motivating character. Does your child love superheroes? Play “Spiderman Says!” Does your child love princesses? Play “Cinderella Says!” If it’s around the holidays, you can do “The Scarecrow Says,” “The Mummy Says,” “The Turkey Says,” “The Snowman Says,” “Santa Says” etc. Be creative! You can even have the person who is “it” dress up like the character. This will not only give your child the opportunity to listen and follow directions but it will also give him the opportunity to give directions to others!
• Only give directions your child can understand. Start simple. Jump. Turn around. Blink your eyes. Once he can follow simple one step directives, start to make them a little harder with two items of information like jump two times or turn around three times. You can then add three part directives like Jump three times then turn around. And so on. If your child is struggling, step back a bit.
• When starting out you may want to give the directions and then show him what you want him to do. For example, tell him “Jump” and then physically jump. This will give him a visual. This is helpful as you start to increase the complexity of the directions.

Red Light, Green Light

Another classic childhood game. Here are some tips for using this game to work on your child’s listening skills:

• Once your child gets the hang of the concepts of green-means-go and red-means-stop, add in another color “light” to the mix! They did this in a class my nephew took…I think it was Purple Light means you jump like a bunny! How fun is that!? Just some ideas off the top of my head: Yellow Light for crawling, Orange light for turning around, Blue light for clapping…you get the idea.
• A tip to help him understand the directions at first: Make signs with the colors you will use in the game with pictures of the motor movements on them. So if you did purple-is-hop-like-a-bunny you can make a round purple “light” and put a picture of a bunny on it as a visual reminder. Then slowly take the signs away and have your child play JUST by listening.

I Spy

My kids LOVE to play this game in the car (along with 20 questions which…drives me crazy sometimes, haha). One person finds an object within view and begins to describe it one attribute at a time. “I spy something blue. I spy something with four wheels. I spy something that goes vroom vroom!” {Sidenote…apparently “vroom” is not a word. What a pity since my son used it constantly as a toddler 😉 } Anyway…the other players must listen to all the attributes and figure out what the item is. This game can even be done items not in view (like a backwards 20 Questions) but I would not recommend this with young children or any child that has difficulties with listening comprehension. Here are my tips for using I Spy with your child:

• Start SIMPLE. To teach the  game, you may want to take three items and place them in front of you and your child to play the first few times, to help your child grasp the game and give him a smaller playing field, if you will. In fact you may need to play this way for a while depending on your child’s age and ability level. Eventually you can play in a small room, outside, in the car, etc.
• To help your little one stay organized and remember the information he is being given, write down each attribute after you say it (even when it is HIS turn, write it down also). Then go back and review the attributes each time with him (do the same when it is your turn to guess so he is continually hearing the attributes over and over).

Obstacle Courses

I’ve written about obstacle courses before. Children usually LOVE them and they combine gross motor learning with language learning (providing a multi-sensory learning experience). Though I have a ton of info on my obstacle course post (be sure to check it out) here are a few recommendations on using them to target listening skills:

• Again, start SIMPLE. Set up maybe only a 3-5 part course at first and then increase it as your child’s skills develop.
• To target listening, you can two things. First, you can give him directions on exactly how to go through the obstacle course. This works best if at least a couple different steps can be manipulated differently. For example, one step could be a small table. But does he go under, over, or around the table? He will have to listen to find out! You could set up a station with blocks and tell him he needs to build a 5 block tower. Maybe a step with a hoola hoop that he could either jump in or actually try to hoola. Make sense?
• Another way to incorporate listening is to have one step of the course be just that: following directions before he can go on. It can be like a “simon says” step where he has to follow whatever directions you give, and then he can keep going.

Follow the Leader

Wait….follow the leader? This is a visual game isn’t it? How can this work on listening? Well…yes this is more of a visual following-directions-game. However for little ones who are really struggling with listening this kind of game might be where you want to start. Even though we often talk about areas of development separately…speech development, gross motor development, cognitive development…they are all intertwined and work together. For example, with little ones with very few words one of the first things we might target is actually gross motor imitation. Yes…even in speech therapy. Why? Because this is an important cognitive skill that helps to lay the foundation for communication. Children learn to imitate motor movements before they learn to talk and they need to be able to imitate to learn.

So…if your little one is having a hard time listening and following directions, you may want to actually back up and just work on gross motor imitation like in Follow the Leader. You also can play follow the leader but incorporate verbalizations that need to be imitated…like saying words, phrases or singing songs. Plus…it’s fun 😉

So now I want to hear from you…what playful ways do YOU use to work on listening skills with your little ones or students? I’d LOVE TO learn some new games and activities!

The original version of this post was published on October 1, 2012.