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Audiology - an unexpected update

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Learning to tie laces

When I was in pre-school in Sweden I remember we had a set of boards that were designed to practice threading and tying laces, I think there possibly were ones with buttons and zips as well. Now our girls have already mastered buttons and zips, they have plenty on their clothes. But, as is the case for many kids these days, they don't really have to deal with laces as most kids shoes either have velcro or elastics. It's still an important skill to master though. I could set them loose on the adult shoes with laces in the house but I liked the larger size of the boards I learnt on as a kid so decided we'd try to make something similar at home.



It's handy with the projects that keep the kids busy through different phases, especially when you've literally got nothing but time to kill like most of us do in these covid times. The girls have yet to actually master the tying of the bow but they enjoyed the process of making their boards and threading their ribbons. This is what we did.

1. Cut out rectangles out of cardboard (recycled some packaging that had arrived in the post last week)


2. We have an eyelet punch so I used that to make holes in two parallel lines along the long sides of the rectangle. You could also use a hole punch or pencil/knife (I used a pencil to make the holes slightly larger as my original ones were a bit wee for the kids with their wide ribbons).


3. The girls got to decorate the cardboard with paint and glitter (that's entirely optional of course!)


4. We cut out a narrower rectangle and rounded the edges on one side to make it look like a ballet slipper. You can design it around any kind of shoe you want though, or make the whole cardboard piece the shoe, or don't make it look like a shoe at all!


5. Thread some string/yarn/ribbon (if ribbon it helps if it is ribbed, one of our bits was and the other was smooth, the smooth one was far too slipper for small hands to learn to tie with so I'll be replacing it with something else but the ribbed ribbon worked great). The kids can practice different patterns as it is great for fine motor skills.





I burnt the ends of the ribbons a bit and squeezed them together to make it easier for the kids to get it through the holes.


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