My friend brought over one of the coolest little gadgets that I have seen!  This fun little pocket microscope is portable and inexpensive which makes it perfect for our family.  You can use it to turn your smartphone into a microscope.

Currently these microscopes are selling for under $5 on amazon!  They are intended for Jewelers, but works great for learning and exploring with kids!  You will be surprised at what these little 45x microscopes can do, plus the price is right:)

 The great thing about this little microscope is that it is totally portable.  No expensive science lab is needed, and you don’t have to use prepared slides.  This little guys can go anywhere you want it to, and you can conduct your observations right where you are.  The things to view are endless, but here are a few thoughts…plants, trees, the sand, dirt, the water in a pond, flowers, seeds, the carpet, the food that you are eating, insects, your arm…the list of new discoveries is endless.

My kids love pretending they are scientists.  The kids loved discovering things in our back yard up close and finding things that you never knew were there.  We were viewing our regular surroundings in a whole new way.  The kids were totally amazed when they put it to their arms to see skin cells up close.  So cool!

As you can see, there is no need for a smart phone to make these little microscopes work. They are great on their own, however check out what else they can do!

The next thing our friends showed us was INCREDIBLE!  You can use it with the camera on your smart phone.  Instead of only one kid looking through it, you can view things as a group!  How cool is that.  All you need to do is line up the viewer with your camera on your phone and zoom it way in.  It can get a bit tricky to hold everything still, but totally worth it.

Check out how cool that is.  Since it is connected to the camera on your phone, you can take creative images of all the cool things that you are discovering and share them with everyone.

I love discovering new learning tools, and I know our family is going to have a ton of fun playing with this little microscope.   Plus microscopes are cool, but one that you can carry around your back yard or take with you on a hike is seriously great.

Here is a link to a fun list of great experiments that my kids love.

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Tammy