Teaching a Sense of Direction

I'm still not sure if this is a nature vs. nurture skill.  Josiah could navigate through the city near our house at a very young age.  Greg has excellent sense of direction.  He was a cop and needed to get anywhere in the city quickly.  He has a better sense of direction than most.  Devon is completely lost less than a mile from our house.  He can't name any roads near our house, including the one we live on.  I told him the name of the road in front of our house was in our address.  Then it clicked.  All I can say is, "Yowsers"  We are missing a major skill.

To start, Devon is not allowed to read or play video games in the vehicle.  Mostly he reads, but never pays attention to where we are.  We have asked him randomly many times where we were and pointed out landmarks as we drive, but he has never bothered to pay attention to them.  He can get his license in    a year, so we need to work on it now.  So we started with having him watch where we are going.  This was a battle of course.  He wanted to read and he's a teenager.

Next, we ask questions.  Where are we?  Which way should we turn to go to town?  Take us home from here.  Where are we Devon?  Name a city between our house and the cities.  The answers he had to these questions were scary...NO CLUE.  We were less than a mile from our country home and he had no idea where we were...He has lived here for 4 years, driven that road at least 800 times and had no idea.  Now we realize, we might need to up the ante.

Today's activity:  Make a map of our house and label the 5 ways to get to the main highway from our house.  We have traveled them all in the last 2 days.  He needed to ride his bike to some of the locations to see how the roads intersected.  That way, maybe he would see more landmarks to help guide him and get some exercise.

Next Steps:  He is excited because I told him if he perfected his map, he could draw one on his wall.  Start with pencil and then add marker to it once he perfected it.  We can always paint over it later.  He gets a say in his room decorations and would spend some time perfecting a great project.  (thanks to my friend Susie Q for this idea)

Google Earth:  Start in the city and find our house, without typing in our address, by following familiar roads.

Labeling his map with familiar landmarks and friend's houses.  Maybe tonight we'll all bike to his Phillip's house with his map and pay attention to where the road goes.

Benefits:  The other kids all sat and made maps of our neighborhood to see if they knew what their older brother did not. We learned what a county is.  The names of roads near our house.  The name of many neighbors. Fun learning going on at the Van Moer house...