A word of smaw fings

This is a pretty crummy microscope, but its a pretty decent kids toy microscope. If you want to buy your kid a $300 microscope, more power to ya, I just don’t think that’s my target audience. This will do enough, feel real enough, and when your kid breaks it you won’t commit seppuku in shame.

How to grow a little green thumb.

Kids love to do things with people they love and admire. There is an evolutionary drive for them to mimic, an emotional NEED. If you garden, this is the perfect thing to keep them entertained. Give them there own little patch of ground (a few feet by a few feet will be plenty) and allow them to try, and succeed or fail, as their own independent person. Let them know you’re available for help and advice, but the fate of their plantings are in their hands.

Or, if you’re not much of a gardener, or don’t have much ground to speak of, growing plants in a window sill is quite educational and even valuable.

There are many things around the house for your kid to plant if their first planting fails and you don’t have seeds. Here is a list of things that will usually sprout.

You’re a tool

I’ve always been a fan of age appropriate real tools, but when my daughter sat on my lap and patiently took apart a DVD player at age two (I loosened the scews) while we watched a movie, that belief turned more into a dogma. Not only does it boost a childs confidence to be productively helping their parents, using tools at a young age (with appropriate supervision), is excellent for hand eye coordination. Unfortunately I’ve never found a decent “My First Toolkit” so unless you’ve found one (please leave it in the comments) we’ll have to build out own. Half of having the toolkit is litterally (don’t you hate that… litterally) just to have it while you work on something your kids have their own tools to work with.

Playing Doctor

Playing doctor with your kid is a good way to address concerns and alleviate fears about going to the doctor, and its fun! You can talk about how shots hurt, but only for a little bit, and play giving shots with a syringe. A cheap plastic doctors kit only barely represents the items they’re supposed to be… to an adult, how is a kid whose never seen them supposed to recognize them? They’re going to learn a stethoscope is a cheap piece of plastic that only barely works, if at all.