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Science Magnifying Glass Activity for Preschoolers

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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 a simple magnifying glass activity for preschoolers using a science discovery tray.

Explore textures and different objects with a simple magnifying glass activity for preschoolers with a science discovery tray!

How to Do a Magnifying Glass Activity for Preschoolers

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

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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!

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How to Set Up a Magnifying Glass Activity

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!

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.

How to Do the Magnifying Glass Discovery Science Activity

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!

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More Discovery Activities for Preschoolers

Creative and Educational Science Discovery Bottles

Color-Mixing Fun: Unicorn Color Changing Discovery Bottle

Sparkly and Colorful Patriotic Discovery Bottle for Kids

Preschool Nature Table

Save this idea for later so you don't forget to use it!