Practice Following Directions in the Kitchen

Improving your students’ ability to follow directions is not only a skill that will help improve your daily life in the classroom, but it will help your students out in the real world.

Yeah, we know that look!

A great way to improve this fundamental skill is by practicing it in the kitchen. We love kitchen activities, because they are cross-curricular and wonderful for any age.  As you know, when cooking and following a recipe, you must read the instructions thoroughly—yay reading comprehension! You must measure—yay math skills! You must follow directions—yay life skills!

The below ice cream recipe is from our popular, Understanding Instructions in the Kitchen activity book. This tasty recipe has six ingredients and eight simple instructions. Bring your kids into the kitchen and put them in charge of making this recipe—they’ll have to follow each step to get the recipe just right.  Bonus! You’ll have delicious peach ice cream to eat at the end.

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Now, while the ice cream is in the freezer, ask your kiddos a few comprehension questions.  Like these:

1. How many cups of canned peaches did you use?
2. What did you mix the dry milk powder with?
3. What did you do before you poured the mixture into freezer trays?
4. What is the first step?
5. What is the last step?

You can also give students this worksheet <free download> to complete while they wait for the ice cream to set. It asks students to rewrite false sentences about the recipe to make them true.

Having troubles getting students to follow directions? Use this #icecream recipe & activity from @remediapub #edchat
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Still finding yourself giving "the look"?
Try these tips to help you avoid repeating instructions to students.

Or try these hands-on activities to practice following directions: Understanding Instructions: Arts & Crafts Projects or any of these reproducible activity books.