{Through the Magnifying Glass}

(I wrote this as a guest post for Greening Sam and Avery. In case you missed it (which I will forgive you for since it was a weekend), here is the full post.)


I recently bought a kids' magnifying glass on sale at Michaels. It's made of plastic instead of glass, so no need to worry about my little peas dropping it and breaking the glass.

I was excited to see what the world really looked like through a preschooler's eyes, so after a brief demonstration of how to hold it (not too close to the eyes, just a little above the object), I set Princess Pea out in Grandma's garden with it and waited to see what she would find of interest to her.

Here are some of the things she examined:

(It's a pile of seaweed from a recent beach exploration, in case you're wondering!)

Despite the demo, her natural inclination was to hold the magnifying glass right up to her face, like glasses, so I had to remind her a couple of times about how to hold it farther away.

We talked a little about how you can see details with it that we wouldn't normally notice, such as the water drops on the grass (she was sure they were ice until she touched them), lines on our palms, and holes in the leaves (why are there holes?).

We talked about how caterpillars eat leaves and leave little holes in them, like in The Very Hungry Caterpillar (still a favourite in our household), and we looked under and around the leaves to see if we could find any caterpillars or chrysalises like in Clara Caterpillar (which we recently borrowed from the library) (no luck finding any, though).

We found a bee inside one of the flowers, which reminded her that bees go inside flowers to get the 'yellow stuff' (she can never remember the word pollen) to make it into honey, which reminded her of The Big Honey Hunt that we just read at Granny's, and of the working bee hive we saw during our recent visit to the Wildlife Park.

Then she discovered her footprints with it ... which led to a completely different tangent.

I can't wait to try magnifying glass explorations again soon. Even Sweet Pea took an interest when she woke up from her nap - she snatched it right up and had a go too! It was a great way for the girls to explore nature, and it led to some wonderful dialogue about how the natural world works. And I loved the connections she made to recent stories and experiences!





Linked to: It's Playtime, Best Toys for Toddlers, Sunday Showcase, I Can Teach My Child

This post was featured in Nature News!