All right, someone help me out here.

Trying to teach Binta (age 5) how to tie her shoes. Any clever tricks or hints? We're really struggling!

Well, after many bouts of tears and words of frustration, ("I give up on tying shoes forever!") she finally got it.

I tried all of the clever stories/songs I found on the internet. I modeled for her 1,000 times how I do it, we even colored one half of the laces with a blue marker. (As the blue came off in our hands, I said, "We look like Smurfs!" and she said, "What are Smurfs?" lol)

What I finally thought of, at the end of the evening, was to un-lace the entire shoe so it was only using 2 eyelets. That gave her more lace to work with. As she experienced success, and was getting better, I would add 2 more eyelets, making the lace incrementally shorter. Finally, I was able to lace up the whole shoe, and she did it!

Whew!

What happens when we get to geometric proofs in high school? lol