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Post by Chester on Aug 20, 2005 19:31:28 GMT -5
We're leaving for vacation tomorrow. I have a 6 year old nephew, going into first grade, with some OT issues. My sister gave me the job of working with my nephew on learning to tie his shoes.
Anyone have any shoe tying trick up their sleave? With my older two, I think it was patience and a "bunny" song.
Dawn
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Post by Chester on Aug 21, 2005 0:07:44 GMT -5
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Post by momofrussell on Aug 21, 2005 6:44:38 GMT -5
GREAT... shoe tying made EASY but it's $24 dollars! LMAO I remember Regan never really interested.. she was so mellow and well, she wasn't "eager" to learn stuff like this... so she didn't learn to tie until she was probably 6 and didn't learn to ride a bike until she was 6 1/2.. she really was not too interested. Reece is totally different and WANTS to learn it all. Amazing how this works LOL. So, at 4 she already shows alot of interest in tieing her shoes. We need to work on this and get her going before kindy next year. Maybe she will learn to ride a bike too! Good luck.. I have NO helpful hints. It IS a difficult task if you think about it... because of the around and UNDER/THROUGH part... and when you are showing THEM your big hands get in the way of where their eyes are suppose to see! At least that is how it is for Reece and I! She tries though! We have one of othse puzzles too, like one of those wodden "Melissa and Doug" puzzles with three shoes on it and they all have laces to tie. That is a good thing to get! A.
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Post by laurasnowbird on Aug 21, 2005 16:47:51 GMT -5
This is supposed to be specific to kids with fine motor issues, so maybe this will help?
I don't know whose Down Syndrome News this is from, but I saved it for when Ethan will need it.
DOWN SYNDROME NEWS VOL. 20 NO.9 PAGE 121 Steps to Shoe Tying Success By Meg Egan
Cheryl Beahn figured her 7-year-old son, Ryan, would wear Velcro shoes for a long time. Ryan has mental retardation, but since he had early trouble with motor skills, and for a time had difficulty just picking things up, Beahn never expected her son would arrive home from school knowing how to tie his shoes. But one day he walked in grinning, plopped himself down on the floor, stuck one hand behind his back, and proceeded to tie his sneaker by himself. Thanks to a simple shoe-tying method developed by Kim Mickley, COTA, Ryan has been relishing this bit of independence ever since. "Ryan-he gets so ecstatic. Tongue-tied," his mother said. "This is a real thrill. He's showing some independence... He's being just like his brother and sister. He's doing what they do. Little things that others can do that he can't-he notices." In the last year Mickley has taught 15 children with varying degrees of mental retardation and autism to tie their shoes. Before then, she averaged one or two students a year. "In the past I would teach children the way I tie my shoes, telling them to take whatever lace was on top and pull in under-those sorts of instructions," she said. "That's so hard for figure-ground perception." Mickley is an employee of Colonial Northampton Intermediate Unit Number 20 in Easton, PA, which provides special education services to 13 school districts in a three-county area. Her task-oriented method breaks shoe-tying into several specific steps, each of which a child begins by using a dominant hand- "the hand you hold your pencil with," Mickley tells them. She frequently works with students at a desk or on the floor, one shoe off and facing in the same direction as the bare foot, with the laces hanging down, one on either side of the shoe. Mickley first asks students to raise their dominant hands and place their non-dominant hands behind their backs to reinforce that these are the hands they ought to use to begin each step. She doesn't refer to hands as being "right" or "left," since many of her students don't understand the distinction. Students use the dominant hand to pick up the lace on the dominant side and cross it over the shoe. With the same hand they cross the lace on the opposite side over to make an "X". "The emphasis of this is that you learn each step and you don't go on to the next one until you learn that step," Mickley said. "We would practice this (and each of the subsequent steps) at least five times, until the child could do it without me talking them through it." With the non-dominant hand still behind their backs, students next slide the dominant side lace, put it under the "X" and grab with the dominant hand. They use the non-dominant hand to grab the other lace, and then pull both sides tight. Mickley again practices the step at least five times, then has the students use the dominant hand to make a medium-sized loop with the lace on the dominant side, and hold it against the shoe with the thumb and forefinger, tail hanging down. After practicing making loops on the dominant side, students use the non-dominant hand to pick up the other lace and wrap it around behind the loop toward themselves: clockwise. For the next step she has them make a fist with the non-dominant hand, and use that thumb to push the lace through the circle and away from their bodies, then hold it there. Once again, both steps require practice. Next, the dominant hand drops its loop and grabs the lace resting in the non-dominant thumb and forefinger. This, too, requires practice. Finally, the non-dominant hand grabs the other loop with its thumb and forefinger, and students pull both loops sideways. Mickley suggested practicing all the steps beginning at number three-making the first loop-several times with the shoe off the foot, resting on the floor or desk. Then students must practice tying with the shoe on the foot. Mastering this may take additional practice since laces tend to shorten once students put their shoes on. As a final step, Mickley reviews how to untie the laces without knotting them: by pulling one of the tails, not the loops. Mickley often encounters students who have learned to tie their shoes using the "rabbit ear method," in which they make two loops, cross one over and under the other, then pull them into a bow. She said that although they may successfully tie their shoes this way, she always teaches these students her method. "The rabbit ear method, obviously that's not appropriate for adults," she said. "You don't see adults tie that way. So eventually they'll have to learn the other way." Mickley sees a lot of students with high-level autism, many of whom have problems with motor planning. One, a 10-year-old whom she treated for five years, was one of the only kids in his class who couldn't tie his shoes-and until she developed her dominant-hand method, she didn't foresee him ever learning how. "It was just, basically, impossible to teach him how (using other methods)," she said. "There was no way he could remember all the steps," Using the new method, the boy learned in two 45-minute sessions.
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Post by Chester on Aug 25, 2005 23:18:08 GMT -5
I know A~ $24.00 to learn to tie your shoes! OUCH!!
thanks Laura, it sounds like the method you sent (rabbit ear) is kinda what I used for my nephew. His hand eye coordination is pretty weak. I ended up tying his laces in slip notes so that both laces have a loop (the rabbit ears)....then he just had to take the loops (bunny ears) and tie the loops into a knot.
I found the method on the internet and had to improvise, because he couldn't make the loops like they suggested. He's going to practice that way for awhile and we'll work him up to other techniques once he's got the pinching of strings and coordination of hands down a bit.
I taught his Mom, My sister, how to french braid too......to say the least I know where her son got his hand eye coordination from!
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