Once you’ve got the hang of focusing, the best way to get better at microscopy is simply to look at lots of things. You don’t need a box of prepared slides to start. Most of the activities below use things you already have in the kitchen, garden or bathroom cupboard, and many work well for children with a bit of adult help.
If you’re still learning the basics, our guide on how to use a microscope properly covers the step-by-step routine first.
Before You Start: Compound or Stereo?
It helps to match the activity to the microscope you have:
- Compound microscopes shine light up through the specimen, so it needs to be thin or transparent. They’re the right tool for cells, pond organisms, yeast and thin slices of things.
- Stereo (dissecting) microscopes magnify less but let you look at whole, solid objects lit from above, such as insects, coins, rocks, leaves and fabric. The image is upright and three-dimensional, which younger children often find easier.
Most of the “household objects” activities below work on either type. The “living things” activities generally need a compound microscope.
Three Quick Ways to Make a Slide
- Dry mount: place the specimen (a hair, a few grains of salt) straight on a slide, with or without a coverslip on top. Fine for low power.
- Wet mount: put a drop of water on the slide, add the specimen, then lower a coverslip at an angle so one edge touches the water first. This keeps soft or living specimens flat and moist. Blot excess water from the edges with a corner of paper towel.
- Tape slide: press clear tape onto a surface or sprinkle grains onto the sticky side, then stick the tape onto a slide (or, for very simple setups, use the tape strip on its own). Good for powders, fingerprints and dust.
Easy Activities for Kids and Beginners
The Letter E
Cut a small lowercase “e” out of a newspaper, make a wet mount and look at it on low power. It appears upside down and backwards, and moves the opposite way when you push the slide. It’s the classic first activity because it teaches you how the microscope behaves. Our page on why the letter e is inverted in a microscope explains what’s going on and how to run it.
Salt, Sugar and the Mystery Powder Challenge
Sprinkle a few grains of table salt onto tape or a slide and look at low power. Salt grains are often roughly cube-shaped, while sugar grains tend to look more irregular. Then try other kitchen powders, such as flour, cornstarch, baking soda and ground coffee, and sketch each one.
To turn it into a game, have one person secretly put a “mystery” powder on a slide while the others try to identify it from their sketches.
Hair and Fabric Fibers
Lay a single hair across a slide and compare hairs from different people or pets. At 100x to 400x on a compound microscope, you may see the overlapping scales on the hair’s surface, though this is easier with lighter-colored hair. Then snip a few threads from different fabrics: cotton, wool, polyester, denim. Natural and synthetic fibers often look quite different, with wool showing scales and many synthetic fibers looking smooth and even.
Paper Money and Printed Pictures
Banknotes are full of fine detail. Under a stereo microscope or at low power you can see fine engraved lines and tiny printed text. Some currencies, including US banknotes, also have small colored fibers mixed into the paper. A color photo from a magazine is another good one: the “solid” colors usually turn out to be patterns of tiny colored dots.
Tape Fingerprints
Press a fingertip firmly onto the sticky side of clear tape (a little pencil graphite rubbed on your finger first makes the print stand out), then stick the tape onto a slide. Look at low power to see the ridges, loops and whorls, and compare prints from different family members.
Sand Grains
Sand from different beaches, riverbeds or play sandpits can look completely different: rounded or sharp, clear or colored. Some beach sands include tiny shell fragments. Sand is too thick to see through well on a compound microscope at high power, so stick to low power, or use a stereo microscope with light from above.
Grow Crystals on a Slide
Dissolve as much table salt as you can in a few spoonfuls of warm water, put a drop on a slide and let it dry somewhere undisturbed. Check it every few minutes at low power as it evaporates; you may see crystals forming at the edges first. Try the same with sugar or Epsom salt and compare the shapes.
Activities With Living Things
Onion Skin Cells
Peel an onion layer and pull away the thin, transparent skin from its inner surface. Lay a small flat piece in a drop of water and add a coverslip. At 100x you’ll see a neat pattern of rectangular cells like bricks in a wall. A tiny drop of iodine solution (the kind sold for staining, used with adult supervision) stains the nuclei so they’re easier to see.
Cork Cells, Like Robert Hooke
In his 1665 book Micrographia, Robert Hooke described thin slices of cork as being made of tiny compartments, and he called them “cells.” You can repeat his observation. An adult should cut the thinnest slice possible from a cork with a sharp blade. View it dry or as a wet mount at low power. You’ll see the empty walls left behind by dead cells, often in a honeycomb-like pattern.
Elodea Leaves and Chloroplasts
Elodea (pondweed, often sold for aquariums) has leaves only a couple of cells thick. Pluck one small leaf, mount it in a drop of water and look at 100x and then 400x. You’ll see the green chloroplasts inside each cell, and if the leaf is healthy and warm, you may see them slowly moving around the edge of the cell.
Pond Water Safari
Collect water from a pond, puddle or long-standing birdbath, including a little sediment or a bit of plant material from the bottom. Put a drop on a slide with a coverslip and scan at 40x and 100x. Depending on where you collected it, you may find algae, rotifers, protozoa such as Paramecium and tiny crustaceans. Some move fast, so turn the light down a little and be patient.
Wash your hands afterwards, and don’t collect from water that might be contaminated with sewage.
Baker’s Yeast
Stir a pinch of dried yeast into a little warm water with a pinch of sugar, wait 15 to 30 minutes, then put a small drop on a slide. At 400x you’ll see small oval cells, and some may be budding, with a small “daughter” cell growing off the side of a larger one.
Pollen
Tap a ripe flower over a slide to collect a little yellow dust, or pick out a stamen. Pollen grains from different plants can be smooth, spiky, ridged or shaped like little balls with “wings.” Compare a few different flowers. If anyone in the house has hay fever, keep this one brief and tidy.
Tips for Doing This With Kids
- Adults handle the sharp and breakable parts: razor blades, glass coverslips and slides.
- Always start on the lowest power. It’s easier to find the specimen and more satisfying for impatient viewers.
- Use stains with care. Iodine and other stains mark skin and clothing and shouldn’t be swallowed. Keep them for older children with supervision.
- Expect some blank views. If nothing appears, our troubleshooting guide for when you can’t see anything covers the usual culprits.
- Keep sessions short. Ten or fifteen minutes of looking is plenty for younger children.
Keep a Microscope Journal
Scientists record what they see, and it’s a good habit for anyone. For each slide, note the date, what it is, how you prepared it and the magnification. Then make a quick sketch inside a circle to represent the field of view. Over time the journal becomes a record of everything you’ve explored.
When you’re ready for something more structured, our list of good microscope experiments for high school students adds measurement and simple variables. If you’re curious how far magnification can take you, see what a 1000x microscope can see.