the shoelace situation: the latest update

I'm not sure why I find my students' shoelace situation so funny, but I really do. The shoelace situation, consists of the untying and retying and retying and knotting of shoelaces while my students sit on the carpet, supposedly learning from me. I think it is hilarious - while being incredibly frustrating and annoying at the same time. 

Anyway, the latest tidbit of shoelace humor was on Friday, when I had my students stand up to sing a song about position words (ie. beside, behind, in front of). Dayonia didn't stand up. I repeated my direction to stand up. She threw me a pleading look and raised her arm to explain. Her hand was attached to her shoe. She had somehow managed to tie her wrist to her shoe, using her shoelace. And it was tied tight. Now, I've seen some interesting knots and combinations over the course of 330 days of sitting on the carpet with 4-yr-olds. I've seen shoes tied together (remember Amari trying to board the bus with her shoelaces tied together because she couldn't get them undone?) and shoelaces tied to other students' shoes (Jabari and Jaylen, last year, thought they were pretty clever until they wanted to do different things at center time - and then they hustled to untie them!), shoelaces used as chewtoys (a current common practice) and shoelaces pulled out of the shoes altogether and used for a wholly different purpose (such as smacking the nearest neighbor with them - Jayson has a hard time keeping his shoelaces in his shoes). Pablo would untie his shoelaces as soon as he got to the carpet and then knot them over and over until there were no strings left, which was quite effective in keeping his shoes tied. Another current trend is to have laces so long that there is about a foot of string left over even after a bow is tied - which is incredibly tempting for students walking next in line.  But never have I seen anyone tie their wrist to their shoe. It really was quite impressive: I don't think I could do it. 

Well, as Dayonia was going to be in the way of our song, I indicated that she needed to step off to the side until she fixed her shoelaces. She awkwardly jumped/hobbled off the carpet, knocking several other students over as she did so, and got to work untying her shoelace. It took her quite a while, since, as I said, it was really tight, and she had done a good job with the knot. Luckily for me, I discovered the problem right before we began a song, so I had a decent reason for my uncontrolled laughter.