a peek inside the fishbowl

Back in April Sarah got a real junior-scientist model microscope for her birthday, along with a small wooden case of prepared slides, a pack of blanks, and some thin squares of glass used to keep specimens flat and in place.

We asked Emma to collect some pond water during a recent field trip so we could have a closer look at it with the microscope. My kids are old enough to know they shouldn’t drink pond water, but I tell ya, this was the ultimate lesson in Water That Looks Fine But Really Isn’t. There were bits of dead bugs, leaves, some kind of single celled protozoa (or amoebae?), and even a few LIVE THINGS hovering around in there. Wow.

In the wintertime I might have to do this again, but with snow.

There are a lot of cool things kids can observe under a microscope. We’ve looked at:

• salt (did you know there’s difference between table salt and sea salt?)
• pepper
• sugar
• cinnamon (Sarah declared it to look like mould)
• grass and leaves
• bug parts (save the next dead fly you find on the window ledge!)
• hair (including the end of a piece of freshly-plucked hair)
• feathers
• sand
• skin and blood (those were the slides – no blood was extracted from our children I swear.)

I remember reading somewhere about scraping some dental plaque onto a slide to look at under a microscope. It sounds disgusting, but it might result in more focused teeth-brushing, don’t you think? I might try that tonight.

ETA: please take my advice and DO NOT do a Google image search for dental plaque. *shiver*