I am 'home schooling' my children. All five of them. What a chore, but what a satisfying chore! I urge anyone who has both children and the time to invest in them to try their hand at home schooling.
Now I am not doing what is traditional home schooling. I do not create their curriculum. I should say, I do not create all of their curriculum. There is a lot of freedom to add to what I teach them. Instead of traditional home schooling, I am a learning coach guiding my children through an online public school called Connections Academy. No one that I have steered towards Connections Academy has been disappointed.
The freedom to explore their education leads to many educational discoveries. We are exploring amateur radio, Latin and computer programming to name just a few. Today, I want to give a review of a device we are incorporating into our classes. A microscope.
The microscope I bought us and we are having a hoot with is the My First Lab Duo-Scope, model MFL-06. It cost me a modest $63.99 (free shipping with Amazon Prime) through Amazon.com. It is not the heavy metal behemoth you used in high school. Much of it is plastic and it feels light weight and deserving of special handling. I frequently tell Amaya to not lean on the eye piece, afraid she will break it off. Regardless of how it feels, it works great. Focus is crisp and sharp, the lights are bright, nothing is loose or jiggly.
It calls itself a duo-scope because it has two different light sources. One that shines up through the material you are viewing and one that shines down on the material. When I went to school (am I so old, really?) there was a metal reflector that you had to use to reflect sunlight up through the material. It was a real challenge for me to get enough light and I never really enjoyed using a microscope. Boy did I miss out on a lot! The bright LED lights use three 'AA' batteries. I do not know how long they will last. We have been using ours for four days so far. Not nearly enough time to judge the efficiency of the lights.
For optics, it has a x10 eyepiece, a x4 objective lens, a x10 objective lens and a x40 objective lens. I considered buying a microscope with a higher magnification (X1000 vs x400) but based on other reviewer's comment I decided that a clear x400 was better than a blurry x1000. I've not be disappointed with the optics or my choice in a lower magnification range. Most of the things I have viewed have looked wonderful on the lowest setting of x40 (eyepiece times objective lens). Some things have required a higher setting to see more detail but a clear image at x400 has been enough to open a whole new world of discovery.
Something that I discovered (I discovered it because I didn't read the manual to learn it) is that you cannot use the overhead light at the highest magnification. The x40 objective lens gets so close to what you are viewing that it blocks the light.
Things I wish were different. I am very pleased with the microscope. I can think of only one thing I wish was different. I wish there was a power cable for the microscope. I find it needlessly expensive, wasteful and ecologically unfriendly to require batteries. A USB connector would be ideal, but even a normal wall adapter would be useful.
I didn't add any picture because I don't have an adapter for my camera. If you want to see the outside of the microscope, just follow the links I posted. I really wish I could show you some of the great images that have been eliciting squeals of delight from my children, made my wife shudder and keep the smiles on my face.
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