What is a toy microscope?

Is a toy microscope what your child needs? These are questions every parent or teacher must ask themselves before purchasing a microscope for a kid. A typical kid microscope generally consists of a compound light microscope with total magnification of 40x, 100x, and 400x. It is not recommend to use a 100x oil immersion objective, which would give a total magnification of 1000x, for a child, as it requires the use of immersion oil that could damage other objectives. Most toy microscope have these three objectives. And they generally have a 10x eyepiece that is on a monocular eyetube.

The higher grade microscopes have binocular heads with two viewing eyepieces, one for each eye. They give a nicer image “feel”, but is actually just the identical image that is split by a prism and equally shared. A toy microscope is generally sold as a full kit, including blank microscope slides, blank cover slips, sample prepared and stained specimens on glass slides, stains for making new prepared slides, and some tools for dissection. Purchasing of a complete kit for a child is highly recommended, otherwise, the parent must go through the headache and extra expense of finding these items separately.

Plus, the excitement of a new “toy” can be quickly diminished if the right items are not all present when the package is opened. Most parents looking for a toy microscope are on a limited budget. They don’t want to spend a lot of money for a gift for their child. But they also want something that will give their kid a unique learning experience, and help to better position their child into a potential future career. At the very least, a kid’s microscope set is a good learning tool that can give children an advantage in their elementary science class. Our toy microscopes are provided with a full kit of all needed items to get started. They are also cheap priced to allow affordability for those on the limited budget. If you have children who are looking for a toy microscope, and you as a parent want to encourage your child’s science learning experience, please contact us today.