Socks & Shoes

We’re still early in the process and there are some things I wanted to see if they could do. I picked an activity for this one that would show me how they thought shoes were laced and if they could do it themselves.

Book

The Foot Book. I’m a huge fan of Dr. Seuss’ books. The kids love the rhymes (let’s be real – I love the rhymes) and there are so many things to point out to them and ask them about.

How do you think his feet got sick?

Do you think clowns really have giant feet? Or just really big shoes?

Flashcards

We still only have two cards, but we go over them a few times and the kids are getting good at giving me new words with the same old letters.

Song

We watched this video a couple of times and tried to sing the song. It’s a cute video about getting dressed in the morning and things to remember when it’s cold outside. It’s August in Southern California so it’s not exactly cold here right now, but it was still fun to talk about what kinds of clothing we would wear for different things.

Activity

I wanted to see what they would do with a lacing board. I looked online for one that looked like shoes that they could actually lace like shoes, but couldn’t find anything anywhere. I was able to find just some flat wooden boards that had holes and had shoes painted on them that they could weave some laces in and out of, but I didn’t want to pay as much as they were asking so I made my own shoes instead.

I went online and found some clipart, made it bigger, and printed two sets. Then I cut them out, laminated them, and punched the holes.

I would have preferred to have actual shoelaces, mostly because the ends wouldn’t fray, but I didn’t have any, so I just cut a few pieces of yarn and taped the ends. We have painters’ tape in great supply in our house, so I used that. The green yarn with the blue tape actually ended up looking really cute with the clipart shoes I picked.

They weren’t perfectly laced, but that wasn’t the point of the activity anyway so it didn’t matter. It was more about their motor skills than it was about the actual lacing of the shoes.

And, yes, I did realize that I could have used just plain old shoes – actual shoes. But you know how it is when you get your shoes laced just right and then a lace breaks and you have to put new ones in and your shoes never fit the same way again? Yeah, no thanks.

Lucy doesn’t have any laced shoes yet. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

All Done!

Lucy and Nixon had a good time with the shoes and wanted to do it again and again. It was also something they could do on their own without a lot of direction or help from us. I think they enjoyed that little bit of independence.

Socks and Shoes