Focus (pun intended) on the little things

On Fridays we are involved in a co-op that offers 3 50-minute classes to all age-groups. Each family must teach or co-teach in at least two classes.

My husband and I are doing the labs for a high school biology class for our daughter. We have 6 girls and one boy (sorry Joseph!) in this class. With 4 microscopes to share, and a double-headed teaching microscope, the kids are getting to see a lot of organisms up close!

While we're there with microscopes, we also decided to offer a microscopy class for 3-5th graders. For the younger set, besides regular microscopes, we also bring three dissecting (also called stereo) microscopes. These don't have the 3 objective lenses to view things on a slide, but allow you to Focus (pun intended) on thicker objects. We have invited the students to bring things to look at, we just asked them not to bring anything alive; only dead, uncrushed bugs, etc. One little girl captured and froze a lizard to bring! She DID follow our instructions to not bring anything alive...
Next time we'll be a little more specific to not KILL something so that you can bring it in!

So far, we have seen some interesting things such as sea shells, feathers, hair, plants, etc. We have 12 very active youngsters in this class. It's been a lot of fun teaching them about microscopes and letting them view things they might not have seen under a microscope. I know MY children may not really believe this, but not every family has access to nice microscopes!