Lefty Links

The following Websites are useful or interesting to LeftHand NZ.  You may want to check them out for yourself.

Some great websites for more information about left-handedness:

Rosemary West’s Left-Handed page
“Your left hand, your right hand, and both sides of your brain.”
Fun facts, resources, book reviews, frequently asked questions, and a lively forum for left-handers worldwide - Something for everyone here.  A very informative website for left-handers and parents who have lefty kids.

Gauche - Comments and Lefty Tips
The objective of this website is to communicate accurate information and simple coping strategies pertinent to left-handers living in a right-biased society.  This site is collaboratively built and it incorporates comments from left-handers worldwide.

About 50 Frequently Asked Questions re left-handedness….
Archived material.  This is not a visually attractive site but a lot of information that has been built up collaboratively over many years can be found here.  Copyright 1995 - 2000 by Barry D. Benowitz.  Use and copying of this information is permitted as long as (1) no fees or compensation are charged for use, copies or access to this information, and (2) this copyright notice is included intact.

Famous Left-Handers
Great long list of famous lefties - Presidents, musicians, sport’s people and more!

For a long list of left-handed artists - The list includes Rembrandt the Dutch Painter, Engraver and Draftsman; and Raphael.  Raphael along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, is considered one of the three Great Names of the High Renaissance in Italy. (Raphael and Leonardo - both lefties and Michelangelo ambidextrous.)

Are left-handers quicker thinkers than righties?
This article says they are!!

What Makes a Lefty: Myths and Mysteries Persist
By Corey Binns - Special to Live Science.  Click this link if you would like to view pictures of a counter clockwise and a clockwise hair whorl.  Apparently one-half of people with counter clockwise whorls are left-handed, but only a small percentage of people with a clockwise whorl are left-handed..... Can openers, scissors and spiral-bound notebooks discriminate against lefties. Despite such challenges, 10 to 12 percent of the human population has historically preferred the left hand.

Some general interest topics for left-handers

Resources for parents and teachers:

Good reading for both parents and educators
A page with some good advice and information for parents with left-handed children - how parents can help their left-handed child in daily life.  The most common and serious problems left-handers face at school. 

Left-handers at school - how teachers can help….
A good article especially for teachers about the difficulties left-handed children face at school and how teachers can help and support them.

Handwriting - how lefties should position the paper….
Coaching ergonomics - a very clear explanation with animated illustrations about how lefties write and how they should position their paper.  Good, informative page for both parents and teachers - how left-handers should sit, write and position their paper.

Developing School Readiness and Fine Motor Skills
A trained Occupational Therapist and home schooling Mum, Tracey, has developed a great website full of exercises you can do with your child to develop school readiness skills.  Well developed fine motor skills will help your child learn handwriting with a minimum of effort.  The exercises in this awesome website are fun, easy to do and most of the activities use inexpensive materials you've probably already got in your home.  Best of all - the step by step photographic instructions of the exercises make it really easy to follow how they should be done.  A new page added recently gives great instructions about how to teach your child how to cut out with scissors.

For Teachers and Homeschooling Parents - Owlteacher.com

This website is  especially useful for teachers and homeschooling parents of the higher year levels.  It is full of great ideas and downloadable resources and more are being added all the time.  Anna also offers custom-created lesson plans that can be designed specifically to meet your needs.  Beginning teachers (and old hands too who would like a quick refresher) will find this page both amusing and full of helpful tips.

Nannie-Can-Do-Kids-Crafts
At Nannie Can Do Kids Crafts you can expect to find easy and sometimes downright unique crafts for kids.  Nannie CanDo's website is an interactive site full of tips, techniques and heaps of fantastic ideas.  Nannie Marylyn is bubbling with enthusiasm and she loves trying out all her fun ideas with her lucky grandchildren!

Paper and scissor craft activities

Great website full of resources for young children to develop fine motor skills by colouring in and cutting things out. 

For inexpensive, easy and quick craft ideas

This website offers you a lot of easy and inexpensive craft ideas for young children. There is a page dealing with making crafts from recycled materials and there are crafts to make to celebrate special holidays like Christmas and Easter etc etc.  Lots of tips and crafts that can be done when there isn't much time!

Technology and teaching....
A new and developing website with articles about technology for the classroom, resources for teachers, lessons plans using technology.  Check back often as new information is being added to this site all the time.

Playdough
Making things out of playdough exercises the muscles of the hands and develops your child's fine motor skills and bilateral coordination skills.  For an easy to follow homemade playdough recipe with step-by-step photos click here.

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If your left-handed child learns differently or you think there may be issues such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD, ADHD, autism etc - then our page of special needs links is full of links that will be especially helpful to you.

Useful website references dealing with specific interests:

Left-handed GOLF:

• This website has been on the internet for many years and it only caters for left-handed golfers!

• The website of the National Association of Left-Handed Golfers in New Zealand.

Crochet and Knitting:

• How to crochet left-handed.  Good diagrams and in colour!

• Knitting from a left-hander’s perspective.  
• Another helpful knitting website.

Stains and how to get rid of them!

Stain-Guide.com offers stain removal advice for almost every spot known to man!  Solutions are provided for clothes, fabrics, carpets and upholstery.

If your kids (or you!) spill something - quickly go and check this website to see how to fix the problem!

Music and Musical Instruments:

An interesting article re Handedness in piano playing

Fun websites about being left-handed.

You Tube video….Left-Handed Discrimination

Fun websites……………

Do you fancy yourself as the next Mozart - creating your own tunes??  This fun thing will amuse you - it is described as a simple sinewave synthesizer which is triggered by an ordinary 16 step sequencer.  Select a few blocks with your mouse button, switch on your speakers and listen to the tune you create!  Change the blocks or add to them and see what happens - create some fun little tunes! 

This is one of my favourite cat websites!

For light entertainment and fun I love to drop in on this site every now and again!   You can simply go and enjoy looking at all the kitty pictures or you can go the whole way and vote for them and write the humourous captions.

Funny Poems Website

If you need some cheering up today and a good little chuckle - why not check out this website.  My favourite funny poem so far is: "Obama is a Llama"!  Hats off and thanks to the creative folk who make up and share these wonderful funny poems for our amusement!!  Their latest website can be found here

THREE of my favourite fascinating computer puzzles for you to check out!

1) Quest for the rest - Find the rest of the group...

2) Samorost-1 - Kind of weird but fun to work out!

3) Samorost-2 - As above - weird graphics but fun to work out!

General - New Zealand and other...

 

FindA

This is a great website and very useful for finding businesses and various items if you live in New Zealand.  Their site search works well and their slogan is: “You search, we find!”

Stumble Upon

A little while ago I added a “StumbleUpon” toolbar to my computer and whenever I have a little time I go and do some ‘stumbling’!  Basically, the idea is that you tell Stumble Upon a little about the sorts of things that interest you - your hobbies, computers, website development - or whatever your interests are and then when you press the “Stumble” button on their toolbar you will be presented with websites, images, videos etc in line with the interests you chose.  You can choose to ‘stumble’ only images, or only websites.   It is amazing and it will surprise you!!  You’ll get to see all sorts of things on the internet that you would never even have known to search for using Google or whichever search engine you use. 

For Parents and Grandparents of lefties…..

Membership to Grownups.co.nz is FREE and this website is packed with interesting stuff - from information to all sorts of games to play on the computer - by yourself or with the grandkids.  You never know what you might find! I like to go and have a look every so often.  Try the 'Bloons' game - a sure hit with young grandchildren! 

Website Design
If you'd like a Left Hander's creativity applied to the creation of your website....try Left Hand Web Ltd.  Based in Taupo, Craig Farrar, a creative lefty offers web design, hosting and online marketing for new and existing sites.  

Keep an eye on this page and bookmark it

as we add more useful links to it often!!