Visuals on Daily Living Skill: Tying Shoelaces is a tying shoelaces visual: a series of images or line drawings that show your child or teenager how to tie their shoelaces, one step at a time. Use it to build daily living skills and independence at home, by showing the sequence of steps to follow when tying shoelaces. It works as a printable task analysis for tying shoes that you can keep by the front door.
What is a Task Analysis: Tying Shoelaces?
The Task Analysis: Tying Shoelaces Visual is a series of images, pictures, photographs, or line drawings used to depict the sequence of steps the learner should take when tying their shoelaces.
The goal is to identify and teach each step the learner needs to tie their shoes. Instead of simply asking the learner to tie their shoes, which can feel like a lot to take in at once, the task analysis breaks it down into smaller, more manageable steps.
By breaking the task into a series of specific steps, the learner can focus on one step at a time. This helps them feel less anxious or frustrated, and makes it easier to complete the whole task.
Be consistent: follow the steps in the same order shown on the task analysis visual each time. Make sure all carers use the same tying shoelaces task analysis, so the learner isn’t confused by different methods.
Task Analysis for Tying Shoes: The Steps
A typical task analysis for tying shoes (using the “loop, swoop and pull” method) looks like this. Your shoe tying visual sequence may use slightly different steps, and that’s fine, as long as everyone uses the same one.
- Sit down and put your foot in the shoe.
- Hold one lace in each hand.
- Cross the laces to make an X.
- Tuck the top lace under and pull both laces tight.
- Make a loop with one lace (a “bunny ear”).
- Wrap the other lace around the loop.
- Push that lace through the hole to make a second loop.
- Hold both loops and pull them tight.
Tips for Teaching With a Shoe Tying Task Analysis
- Try backward chaining. You do all the steps except the last one, and your child finishes by pulling the loops tight. When that’s easy, they do the last two steps, and so on. Finishing the task themselves builds confidence.
- Practice off the foot first. A shoe on the table, or a practice board, is easier to see and reach than a shoe on the foot.
- Use two colors of lace. Different colored laces (or coloring half a lace with a marker) make it much easier to follow the tie shoes task analysis.
- Keep sessions short. A few minutes a day, at a calm time, works better than long practice when your child is tired or rushed.
- Allow other options. Shoe tying takes a lot of fine motor skill and motor planning. Elastic laces, Velcro or slip-on shoes are perfectly good choices while your child learns, or long term. An occupational therapist can help if shoe tying is very hard.
Whether you call it a tying shoes task analysis, a task analysis for shoe tying, a task analysis for tying a shoe or a task analysis shoe tying visual, the idea is the same: small steps, shown clearly, practiced often.
