What can kids look at under a microscope?

Kids can look at almost anything small, thin or interesting from around the house and garden. Some of the most reliable crowd-pleasers are:

• Salt and sugar crystals: neat cubes and glassy blocks
• Hair, their own and the dog’s or cat’s: scaly rods that look like tree bark
• Onion skin: a perfect “brick wall” of plant cells
• Printed pictures from a magazine: tiny coloured dots
• Fabric and Velcro: woven threads, hooks and loops
• Insect wings and dead bugs from the windowsill: veins, scales and compound eyes
• Feathers: little hooks that zip the feather together
• Pollen from flowers: spiky, ridged or smooth balls
• Pond or puddle water: real, living microorganisms swimming about

Most of these are free and need no special equipment. Below are more ideas, grouped by where you’ll find them, with the type of microscope that suits each, ideas by age and some simple safety rules.

First, match the specimen to the microscope

The type of microscope you have makes a big difference to what will impress a child.

• Stereo (dissecting) microscopes magnify about 10x to 40x and light the object from above. You can put a whole leaf, coin, shell or bug on the stage. They’re the best choice for young children because they’re easy to use and the 3D view is instantly rewarding.
• Compound microscopes magnify about 40x to 400x or more and shine light up through the specimen. The specimen must be thin or transparent: onion skin, a drop of pond water, a single hair. Older children who are ready to make slides get the most from these.
• Phone clip-on lenses and pocket microscopes are great for surfaces such as fabric, skin, screens and print. See whether you can turn your phone into a microscope for what they can and can’t do.

A common disappointment is putting something thick, like a pebble or a crisp, under a compound microscope and seeing only a black shape. If that happens, switch to light from above, use the lowest magnification, or pick a thinner specimen.

Kitchen specimens

• Salt: cubes, sometimes with stepped faces. Coarse sea salt and kosher salt make interesting shapes.
• Sugar: clear, sharp-edged crystals. Compare it with icing sugar.
• Flour and cornflour: tiny grains. With a compound microscope and a drop of iodine, starch grains turn blue-black.
• Onion skin: peel the thin, see-through layer from inside an onion. Iodine makes the cells and nuclei stand out. Our guide to preparing and staining an onion cell slide explains how.
• Tomato or banana flesh: a tiny smear in water shows soft, rounded cells.
• Spices: pepper, paprika, cinnamon and dried herbs show plant fragments and colours.
• Coffee grounds and tea leaves: rugged landscapes.
• Bread mould: seen under a stereo microscope through a sealed clear bag, mould looks like a forest of threads with tiny balls on top. Don’t open the bag or sniff it.
• Yeast: a pinch of baker’s yeast in warm, sugary water. After a while, a drop at 400x shows tiny oval cells, some with buds.

Garden and nature specimens

• Leaves: look at the underside. Paint a small patch with clear nail varnish, let it dry, lift it off with clear tape and stick it on a slide. You’ll see the stomata, tiny mouth-like pores.
• Flower petals: colour often sits in small cells or bumps on the surface.
• Pollen: tap a ripe flower over a slide. Lilies give lots, but keep lily pollen away from cats and off clothes.
• Moss: a single moss leaf is often only one cell thick and full of green chloroplasts.
• Sand and soil: compare beach sand (rounded grains, shell bits) with garden soil (sharp rock fragments, roots, organic bits).
• Feathers found outdoors: look at the barbs and hooks, then wash hands afterwards.
• Seeds: poppy, mustard and strawberry seeds each have distinctive surfaces.
• Bark and lichen: textured, colourful and sometimes home to tiny animals.

Around the house

• Hair: human hair vs pet hair vs a doll’s synthetic hair.
• Fabric: denim, wool, cotton and polyester all look different. So do a sock and a towel.
• Velcro: hooks on one side, loops on the other.
• Printed paper: a colour photo in a magazine breaks into cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots. Newspaper print is often blotchier.
• Banknotes: tiny printed words and security patterns.
• Screens: a phone or tablet showing a white page reveals rows of red, green and blue lights. Keep the lens from touching the screen.
• Dust: press clear tape onto a dusty shelf, then stick it to a slide. You’ll find fibres, hair and skin flakes.
• Paper and tissue: tangled plant fibres at the torn edge.
• Chalk: blackboard chalk is often made from other materials, but natural chalk can contain tiny fossil shells.

For a fuller tour of household specimens and the magnification each needs, see what everyday things look like under a microscope.

Living things

Watching something move is the moment many children get hooked.

• Pond, puddle or bird-bath water: take a sample from near plants or the bottom, where there’s sediment. Put one drop on a slide, add a coverslip and look at 40x and 100x. Algae, protozoa and tiny animals often appear. Our guide to viewing microorganisms under a microscope helps identify them.
• A hay infusion: soak some dry grass or hay in water for a week or two and you’ll grow your own protozoa. Here’s how to make a hay infusion.
• Water bears (tardigrades): soak a clump of moss from a wall or roof. With patience, children can find these eight-legged animals. See how to find tardigrades in moss.
• Small pond animals: water fleas, flatworms and insect larvae are best under a stereo microscope in a small dish of their own water. Put them back afterwards.

Ideas by age

These are rough guides. Every child is different, and adult help matters more than age.

Simple ways to prepare specimens

• Dry mount: put the object on a slide, with or without a coverslip. Good for hair, salt, pollen and fabric.
• Tape mount: press clear tape on the specimen (dust, pollen, a nail-varnish leaf peel) and stick the tape onto a slide. It’s very child-friendly, and there are no coverslips to break.
• Wet mount: one drop of water, the specimen, then a coverslip lowered at an angle. This is essential for pond water and onion skin. Our wet mount guide shows how to avoid air bubbles, which children often mistake for cells.
• Staining: a drop of iodine (for onion and starch) or methylene blue (for cheek cells) makes pale cells easier to see. An adult should handle the stains. See our methylene blue staining guide.
• Keeping favourites: older children may enjoy making permanent slides of their best finds.

Safety tips

• Glass coverslips are thin and sharp. Young children can use plastic slides and coverslips, or tape mounts. An adult should handle and dispose of glass.
• Never point a microscope mirror at the sun. On older microscopes with a mirror instead of a lamp, reflecting direct sunlight into the eyepiece can damage eyes. Use a lamp or indirect daylight.
• Wash hands after handling pond water, soil, dead insects and feathers. Cover any cuts first.
• Don’t grow bacteria at home. Swabbing surfaces onto agar plates can grow harmful germs along with harmless ones. If a school does this activity, the plates should stay sealed and be disposed of safely.
• No blood sampling for children. Prepared slides of blood are a safer option.
• Adults handle stains and chemicals. Iodine and methylene blue stain skin and clothes, and shouldn’t be swallowed.
• Release live animals back where you found them, and don’t collect from protected sites.

Activities that make it more fun

• Guess the object. One person secretly puts something under the microscope, and the others guess what it is.
• Draw what you see. Drawing makes children look more carefully. Note the magnification beside each drawing.
• Before and after. Salt before and after dissolving and drying; a raw vs cooked carrot; a fresh leaf vs a dried one.
• Compare families. Collect hairs from everyone in the house, or from different pets.
• Take photos. Hold a phone camera to the eyepiece and start a microscope album.
• Keep a nature journal of pond life from week to week.

“I can’t see anything!”

When a child can’t see anything, it’s usually one of these:

1. Wrong objective. Go back to the lowest magnification. It’s much easier to find and focus.
2. Specimen not in the light. Centre it over the hole in the stage, directly under the lens.
3. Specimen too thick. Use a thinner piece, or switch to light from above.
4. Out of focus. Slowly turn the focus knob while looking. For a compound microscope, an adult can first bring the lens close to the slide while watching from the side, then let the child focus away from the slide.
5. Too much or too little light. Adjust the lamp brightness or the small diaphragm under the stage. Pale specimens often look better with less light.
6. Eye position. Children sometimes hold their eye too far from the eyepiece or close the wrong eye. A binocular head, or a USB microscope that shows the image on a screen, can help.

With a few successes at low power, most children quickly want to go further, and that’s the best sign it’s working.