Make Your Own Homemade Slides for Microscopes

Last year, one of our friends from the local college let us have an older microscope, per policy, on "long-term-loan." It has 10x and 40x objectives and I really would love it, if we could add a more powerful one (not sure that's possible) because as of yet, we've not been able to view anything 'wiggling'. (Maybe we're looking in the wrong place!) ...But we have seen some pretty cool stuff!

I think our favorites are hair- animal hair. The goat hair was neat in that the grey was distinctively different from the black. The cat hair was awesome, in that it looked like it had vertical chambers. Weird! And cool!

But- slides were an issue- so- we made some!

We used simple index cards, cutting a 'window' out of the center and using clear tape to make a 'glass' and to hold our samples in place.We left the 'windows' kinda big so more light would show through.

You could also use thin cardboard, like cereal boxes are made from.

We collected all sorts of little things to look at!

Here are some of the interesting things that we looked at;
-goat hair
-cat hair
-human hair
-local honey
-storebought honey
-water that's been standing in a bucket outside
-broccoli
-yeast
-strawberry leaves
-banana
-lint
-dust
-leaves (from trees, plants, etc- old dry leaves were really cool)
-chives
-dried dill
-pencil shavings
-straw
-corn husk
-beetle
-gnat (this was cool because it had WAVY hairs on it's legs)
-coffee grounds
-salt (at 10x these looked like ice cubes)
-black pepper
-mustard seeds
-onion skin
-bathroom paper
-cypress clipping (this was cool too, in that, we've always known this tree to kind of 'stick to us' but under the microscope, we were able to see why- tiny hooks on it's edges!)

Any of you girls found neat things to view under your scopes?
Would love to hear from any of you who have them on tips to make the most use of them!

Job 5:9  Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number