Life Skill Download - Tying Shoes
I was trying to teach my daughter how to tie her shoes and it was not going well. I tried to teach her the "bunny ears" method and it was not clicking for her, which I can understand. It took me a long time to learn how to tie my shoes when I was a kid, too. Theoretically, she could just not have shoes that need to be tied, but I feel like this is still an important skill to learn. I searched for a method that would be easier for her to learn, found a really promising one and then made a life skill download for it after she picked it up super quickly.
For this method you tuck the ends of the laces into either the holes where the laces go in or just into the shoe. Then with the two loops, you have your child just tie two knots and then their shoes are double knotted! It's so simple and seriously the coolest thing ever. When I showed my daughter how to do this, she caught on in two days. I could not recommend this method more.
Since shoe tying is definitely a life skill, I decided to make a life skill download for it. I created the steps for this life skill and then created images showing how the tying of the shoelaces should look so there is a visual for each step. I know a lot of people are very visual when it comes to things like this. Once I had everything ready, I printed it out. I have the individual pages as well as a listed checklist for this skill. I decided to make this a flip book so we could take it with us wherever we go in case my daughter needed to refer back to it. Having it portable was what we needed but you can definitely laminate and put it on a wall if that works for you. I have used the downloads so many different ways that you can refer back to in other blog posts for ideas. that To make the booklet, I printed out the pages and then cut out the six squares on each page.
After they were cut out, I used the hole punch and put a metal ring through them so we had a flip book that was super easy to use. I keep it in my bag in case my daughter needs to look back to it, which we have had to do a couple of times, but I can now confidently say that she can be out in public and sit down and tie her shoes. It definitely is not quick, I'm sure the speed will come over time, but she can effectively tie her shoes on her own, which was the goal of this life skill. In the future, it would be ideal for her to have as many shoes at possible that don't tie, but right now these are her favorite (albeit dirty and worn out) shoes so they were perfect to practice this skill on. I'm still so impressed by her and her ability to crush these life skills I can't wait for her to continue doing so!
If you think this or another life skill download would be good for someone in your life you can find them in the shop.
