I was provided by the producer with the EZ Leaps pictures below, to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

EZLeaps are the only thing in our “backpack” this year that aren’t expressly “green.”  Instead, this is a fun – and handy – addition for the little ones.  EZ Leaps is a ‘specially-cut card about the size of a credit card.  You can see it pictured above with a quarter for reference.

This little gadget was created by a teacher, to serve as an extra set of “hands” for youngsters just learning to tie their own shoes.  (This is just right for the start of a new school year, don’t you think?  When kindergartners will no longer have Mom around to do the tying all the time?)  Sophia and I tried it out.  (Sophia can already tie her shoes, but Livia’s still a little young yet.)  We had mixed feelings about it, and I think that its usefulness will depend a lot on the individual child.

The idea behind this doohickey is that you make your loops through the EZ Leaps; the card will hold the loops in place.  Then you finish tying the bow and can pop the card off.

The picture above shows the first step, and this is where we first ran into a little bit of difficulty.  I think the tool would work much better with very long shoelaces.  We had a little bit of trouble getting enough length to loop the laces through the card without their slipping back out.

After you’ve looped the laces through, you finish tying them into a bow.  It looks kind of like this.  And then pop the card off. Here, too, we had a little bit of trouble.  The first couple times we tried it, we got the bow tied, but then the card got “caught” underneath the center of it and it actually untied the bow as we removed it.  Not quite what we were going for.

After a couple tries, though, we got it.  For us, we thought it would be easier to just tie the shoe without the tool.  But I’m sure that depends on the child.  Some probably have nimbler fingers and would just as soon figure out how to work their fingers for holding and tying the laces instead of messing with the card.  Others probably try and try and still keep dropping the laces and would prefer to have the tool.  It’s not expensive, so if your child is having trouble, it’s worth a look.

The cards come in a variety of designs and have an extra hole punched in the corner so they can be attached to backpacks as a fashion statement.  And the backs are done up as a sort of “certificate” you can fill in and present to the child when he’s learned to tie his shoes.

All in all, it’s a pretty clever solution to a problem the creator kept encountering.