My daughter wants a microscope for her bday. Suggestions? She is turning 5, but she is very advanced, and I would like to get her something she can truly grow into, as opposed to a "toy."
Santa brought my daughter this one http://www.amazon.com/My-First-Lab-Duo-Scope-Microscope/d... after doing a lot of research. You can also find it and more reviews at Fat Brain Toys. The quality seems good, but we haven't had a chance to really play with it yet.
We also just got our son the My first Microscope Duo for Christmas. He just turned 9. We have gotten to play with it a little... it is a pretty good microscope for beginners. Definitely a lot better than some of the cheap ones out there or toys. You may have to help your daughter quite a bit at first until she gets better at focusing the microscope and finding the objects she puts under it. We had to help my son at first, but now he is getting better at it. We have been pretty happy with the quality of it so far.
I bought the eyeclops a long time ago and it is so amazing! You do it on your TV, and it can magnify anything really, you put the eye part on whatever you want to see bigger. It is really powerful, you can see the "hairs" on a string. And since the image is projected through your TV it is really BIG and easy to determine what is what. It's also easy enough for a three year old to do, yet an older kid will still get lots of use out of it as well.
Both my daughters have brought it to school during various science units so they could see the cells of a plant, the grains of salt vs grains of sugar and during rock studies among other things.
This is a link, but it's pricey, wow, I paid about half that when it first came out, you would think the price would go down not up. http://www.amazon.com/EyeClops-Bionic-Eye-Multizoom-Green...
We have a TV that is only a year old and it works with that so I know the type of TV you have will not be an issue either.
She is going to be 5, buy her a fisher price microscope, to see how she takes care of it before you go buy something expensive she may break because she is only 5! Have some common sense on buying things for children at a young age, make have respect for what you give them, before it get destroyed. You may go but a $100.00 item and in 15 minutes it's broke, then the child gets blamed for it, not their fault, the parents need to think 5 years old !!
Our school district is having a sale of old school equipment. We're about 30 mins north of chicago. They have a microscope for $2. Here's the link:
http://www.obenaufauctionsonline.com/cgi-bin/mnlist.cgi?o...
