Abstract: A teaching aid to assist in teaching a young child or other person how to tie his or her own shoelaces by correlating the various steps of the shoelace-tying process to a story or other logical sequence of events that the child is familiar with or can quickly learn so that an adult can readily explain the steps of the process to the child and the child can more easily understand, learn and remember the process. A teaching aid according to the present invention is a special shoelace having distinguishable segments provided thereon which are arranged in a predetermined pattern and at predetermined positions on the shoelace so as to provide a guide for describing the manner in which the shoelace is to be manipulated during the tying process.