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Thursday, November 14, 2013

School Days: Tying Shoelaces

There comes a critical point in every child's life when the life skill of shoelace tying must be learned.  The critical point usually arrives around the time the child reaches kindergarten, sometimes because it is a school requirement and sometimes because the mom is simply tired of tying the child's shoes.  At our house it really amounts to the same thing.  In Brynn's case, though, we have encountered an unusual problem.  The time has come for her to learn to tie her shoes.  She even wants to learn to tie her shoes.  However, since all her shoes are slip-ons or have Velcro straps she has no shoes with laces on which to practice.  An interesting dilemma, no?

Once again, Pinterest came through for me.  I followed a pin to a website that showed a shoe-tying board, and knew I had found my solution.
Step 1: Trace shoes or feet on to a piece of sturdy cardboard.
 Step 2: Decorate shoes (Did you really think a person could learn to tie the laces of plain white shoes?  How silly of you.)
 Step 3: Use a pencil or similarly pointed object and punch four pairs of holes in the shoes.  Insert laces.  
 Step 4: Practice tying.
 In addition to the shoe-tying life lesson, having this board will also help your child learn the valuable skills of "holding it above your head to keep it away from you baby brother" and "hiding it in the coat closet so your toddler sister doesn't learn to tie before you."  Such a useful tool.

Happy shoe-tying, everyone!



Linked up at:
Highhill Homeschool

6 comments:

Margo said...

This made me laugh.

~ Tandis ~ said...

Woohoo! Go Brynnie!!! That's a tricky skill to learn. Keep working at it and you'll get it. :)

Ian might want to borrow the board too. It's been reported that he actually winds his laces in a mass rather than tying them. Haha. Silly boy.

Jessica said...

Those shoes look strangely like Mia's.

Dana said...

@Tandis ~ Ian's new shoes have shorter laces, so the problem has somewhat improved. It wasn't that he wouldn't tie properly, he would just wrap all the long loop parts up afterwards. It looked terrible and didn't improve the tightness at all, but there was no arguing with him.

Kjersten said...

I thought the exact same thing as Mom....Brynn's got the crazy mis-matched shoes thing going on!
Cute post! Go Brynnie!

Dana said...

Brynn was so mad at me at first because I suggested that she not color the shoes bright pink "because the laces are pink and they won't show up." She didn't understand what I meant and was outraged. When I colored small patches in pink and others in blue and purple, and then held the laces against them she gave me a pity-ing look and said "NOW I understand, since you EXPLAINED it better." She goes a little nuts with the markers.....