Left Handed Scissors For Kids

Necessary or Not?

• How scissor cutting can develop fine motor skills  
• Why a consistent hand preference is important  
• How left handed scissors differ from right handed scissors  
• What about "ambidextrous" scissors?  
• Recommended Resources   

How Cutting With Scissors Develops Fine Motor Skills

Children need lots of opportunities to strengthen the hand muscles and practice the finger movements needed to control a pencil for handwriting.

When your child holds scissors with a proper grasp, the tripod fingers (thumb, index and middle fingers) need to work together to open and close the scissors. These are the fingers that will be holding and controlling a pencil.

In addition, the repeated opening and closing of the scissors help to strengthen your child's hand muscles, which helps to build endurance of fine motor tasks, particularly handwriting.

Cutting out on a line can also help to strengthen visual-motor skills, which may help improve handwriting.

Scissor cutting builds endurance for writing

So, as you can see, if a left handed child is using the right hand for scissor cutting tasks, the left hand is not getting enough fine motor practice, and therefore pencil control and handwriting may be affected.

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Why a consistent hand preference is important 

One of the biggest tasks that children need to master in the early years of school, is handwriting. Even in this age of devices and screens, writing remains an important skill to learn.

Because handwriting is such a challenging task, the more "ready" or specialized a child's hand is, the more readily they will be able to focus on learning to actually write, because their chosen hand is ready to control the pencil.

When your child can easily control a pencil with a consistently preferred hand, your child will be more able to write efficiently and effectively, and to pay more attention to thinking about what to write.

The problem that occupational therapists often see, is that when left handed children have been using their right hand for scissor cutting tasks, the left hand might not be strongly specialized, and is thus less ready to master pencil control for handwriting.

Giving your left handed child lots of opportunity to cut with the left hand, will help develop stronger left hand specialization, which can free the brain up for other cognitive tasks.

Cutting with the left hand can help lefties develop a more specialized hand

Read more about hand preference / hand dominance here.

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What's Special About Left Handed Scissors?

Hopefully I have now convinced you that left handed children need to be cutting with their left hands, but what about the actual scissors?

Why can't we just encourage kids to cut with their left hand, using any scissors?

Do we really need left handed scissors for kids who are left handed?

To answer that question, we need to take a look at some actual scissors.

If you look at the pictures of scissors below, the left handed scissors are on the left of each photo. Take a close look at how the blades are attached.

The blades of the left handed scissors are reversed, when compared to the right handed scissors!

Left and Right Scissors (round holes)

Left and Right scissors (oval holes)

Why are the blades reversed on left handed scissors?

There are two huge benefits to the reversed blades on left handed scissors.

• The reversed blades work with the natural left handed cutting motion. If they use right handed scissors, the blades don't open and close as smoothly.
• The reversed blades make it easier for the lefty to see the line along which he/she is cutting.

True left handed scissors for kids will have the blades in a reversed position when compared to right handed scissors. This reduces the frustration that many lefties experience when they are using right handed scissors in the left hand.

When your left handed child uses left handed scissors for the first time, you may need to help him/her learn how to cut on the line again! If they have been using right handed scissors in the left hand, they were probably holding the scissors and the paper awkwardly to be able to view the blades on the line.

So take some time to show how they can hold the paper more naturally, and be able to follow the cutting motion more easily with left handed scissors!

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What About "Ambi" Scissors?

So-called "ambidextrous" scissors are NOT left handed scissors at all. Many companies advertise their scissors as being "suitable for right and left hand users", "for right or left hand use" but it is all simply clever marketing.

The rationale behind the marketing is that the handles have been shaped in such a way that they are comfortable for use in either hand.

HOWEVER, because the blades are still attached in the regular way (for right handed users), they are not actually suitable for left handed kids to use in their left hands. Your child will not get the benefit of the reversed blades as described above

So, do yourself a favor and check the blades of the "left" scissors against the "right" scissors - if they are fixed the same way, they are not true left handed scissors for kids to build their scissor skills.

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Recommended Resources

Whether you have a left-handed child who is just learning scissor cutting, or you need to help a lefty learn how to cut with left-handed scissors, it can really help to go back to basics.

The principles of how to hold scissors, and how to cut along the line, and how to cut out shapes, all apply in exactly the same way when using left handed scissors for kids who are left handed.

You can browse through all my scissor cutting pages or you can get all the information and printables you need for the price of a couple of coffees!

Printable Scissor Skills Resources

My 33 page Scissor Skills E-book will help answer your questions, and will give you step by step photographed activities and tips to help your child learn to cut with scissors.

You can use this resource to help your child master scissor skills, all the way from novice cutters, to kids who need help refining their skills.

33 pages of info and tips with photos

My Fun Cutting Printable Pack gives you 19 different scissor cutting templates to enable your child to learn to cut on straight lines and then to cut out shapes. All the activities are photographed so you and your child can see what you are working towards!

View My Scissor Skills and Cutting Templates Bundle!

Some of the printables in the Fun Cutting Printables Pack

Left Handed Scissors

If you are looking for true left handed scissors for kids in your home or class, then I have linked to a few on Amazon for your convenience. These are similar to ones I use myself.
(I may receive a small commission if you purchase something through these links, which helps support this site. However, you are under no obligation to purchase anything!)

• Lefty's True Left-Handed Scissors^#Ad  Blunt-nosed, suitable for younger children
• Fiskars Left-Handed Scissors^#Ad Sharper nose, suitable for more experienced kids

Now that you have left handed scissors for your child, help them master scissor cutting with the information in the articles below!

Part 1: learn to use scissors

Part 2: learn to cut on lines

Part 3: lots of cutting practice

Correct scissor grip - for left and right handed

I hope that some of your questions about the importance of left handed scissors for kids who are left handed, were answered on this page!

I am passionate about the importance of helping kids learn to cut with scissors as a foundation for fine motor skills, and I hope this page has helped you!

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