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in STEM Activities

Magnifying Glass Discovery Tray Science Activities

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We have done a lot of STEM activities for kids, but most of them have been aimed at Monkey. Until recently, Bo has been too little to do much outside of simple toddler STEM projects. But now that she is almost 3 1/2, she is ready to start her own STEM activities. Today, we explored textures and different objects with simple magnifying glass science activities using a science discovery tray.

It only takes a few household supplies to set up this magnifying glass discovery activity for preschoolers! The perfect no-prep STEM activity for preschool!

Make Your Own Magnifying Glass Discovery Tray

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It only takes a few household supplies to set up this preschool magnifying glass activity.

toddler stem challenge cards

Supplies for your discovery tray:

It only takes a few household supplies to set up this magnifying glass discovery activity for preschoolers! The perfect no-prep STEM activity for preschool!
  • Magnifying glass (the higher the magnification the better. I like this one that has three levels of magnification)
  • Household objects with different textures (we used beads, yarn, flowers, pinecones, rocks, sand, buttons, wood, and a feather)
  • Tray (we used a wood tray)

Magnifying glass science activities you can do with a discovery tray:

It only takes a few household supplies to set up this magnifying glass discovery activity for preschoolers! The perfect no-prep STEM activity for preschool!

I love that this preschool STEM activity requires almost no set-up.

I don’t know what magnification our magnifying glass had, but it was strong enough to allow Bo and Monkey to discover all sorts of things about the objects in our discovery tray.

It only takes a few household supplies to set up this magnifying glass discovery activity for preschoolers! The perfect no-prep STEM activity for preschool!

Bo usually doesn’t sit still for long, so I was surprised at how long she was interested in this activity. She picked the objects up carefully one by one and examined them with the magnifying glass.

She held the glass up extremely close to her face, so I’m not sure how different the objects actually looked, but she still found it fascinating.

It only takes a few household supplies to set up this magnifying glass discovery activity for preschoolers! The perfect no-prep STEM activity for preschool!

While I set up the magnifying glass discovery tray for Bo, Monkey thought it looked super-fun and wanted to join in. She focused on how the sand and the rocks looked similar, which launched a discussion about how sand and glass are made.

She had fun discovering small “rocks” in the sand pile we had. I don’t know if she had ever made the connection between rocks and sand before, so it was a learning activity for everyone!

How to Set Up a Science Discovery Tray

Setting up your own science discovery tray is the easiest thing in the world. You only need a few objects and a strong magnifying glass. Use a tray to keep things together. Most of the objects in our tray were items the girls had collected at some point, which made the activity even more interesting for them.

You could also put together themed magnifying glass discovery trays to explore specific topics, like nature, water, plants, food, insects, toys, cloth, flowers, and hundreds more.

We will definitely be setting up more magnifying glass discovery trays in the future.

toddler stem challenge cards

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Filed Under: STEM Activities

About Brenda Priddy

Brenda grew up thinking she hated science. But when her 4-year- old daughter was more interested in reading science facts than fairy tales, Brenda realized she had to learn more. Through simple at-home science experiments, Brenda developed a passion for science and now works as a STEMed advocate with a team of science educators to create hands-on STEM projects and curriculum for kids.

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What is STEAM?

STEAM activities for kids promote the idea that science, technology, engineering, art, and math can all work together to help kids become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and innovators!

Join us on our journey to discover just how much fun science experiments can be.

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STEAMsational offers STEM and science lesson plans and teaching resources to provide a firm STEM foundation for children in the classroom or home.

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