I recently taught this to a year 3 class and found it very successful.

We had covered the basic north, east, south and west (never eat slimy worms! found in the Ginn Abacus scheme). I put up 4 labels around the class N,E,S,W and proceeded to put down 'buried treasure', which was not buried at all, but was only accessible by negotiating a path around the tables from the carpet in straight lines.

One child had to follow the instructions given by others to reach the 'treasure', e.g. 2 steps south, 4 steps west etc. Even those whose attention it is usually hard to keep for more than 30 seconds were riveted.