Learning to tie those shoes

One of my students is learning to tie her shoelaces. She has always been fascinated by laces and have lately gotten used to taking off her shoes during nap. This helps because we get to learn how to put them on after naptime. She wanted to first learn by watching, and then she wanted to try and do it on her own. We both decided to create something for her to sing to while she was learning to tie her shoes.

It’s semi-silly and not at all well-thought of but here it goes:

my laces make an X, and one goes to the hole.

bunny ear on my right, bunny ear on my left.

They bump into each other, make another X

one gets scared and ducks to the hole.

It doesn’t rhyme, it’s seem very weird but somehow she remembers it and recites it while putting her laces together. She did it twice in one day. So, more practice and we’ll learn all those fancy sneaker lace tricks. J/k

This is a good developmental skill for a child to learn. There are two common ways of tying the shoelace, one is the around the tree method and the other is the bunny ear method. It would be helpful if the shoelaces could be half one color, and half another so a child can see the color differences. It is excellent fine motor and you can encourage this skill by giving your child or student activities such as beading, tearing paper along a line, pinching stickers off paper, weaving yarn into holes and etc.