This defines the amount of light your device can capture and magnify. The aperture is the diameter of the main lens or mirror at the front of the telescope’s body. You need to assess if the interest of the kid is really into astronomy or is just curiosity about telescopes.Īperture: If you do decide to go for a real telescope, the most important feature you need to consider is the telescope’s aperture. A real telescope, on the other hand, will be more useful and it will last longer, but it does have a bit of a learning curve that some kids might not enjoy. Learning curve: How long do you want the telescope to be useful? Toy telescopes might be better for entertainment purposes but they will only have a useful life of two or three years before they outgrow them. To pick a good telescope for your five years old here are the considerations you must take into account. The focus at this age should be on learning, safety, and having fun so kids can develop their interest in space. If this was a guide for any other age range we would start talking about features like aperture and magnification and mirrors vs lenses but, to be honest none of those matters too much at this level. The exception to this is you want to get one for yourself and share it with them. Get one of the telescopes in the toy section or the scopes section. If your kid is only 3 or 4 years old we’d actually recommend you to wait it out a couple years.It will last you for a long time and you will be able to appreciate plenty of cool things in the night sky with it. Get one of the telescopes in the “real telescope” section. If you are interested in astronomy yourself and you have the time to supervise them and learn with them, go for it.So, should you get your five-year-old a telescope? Once your kid grows a little bit more, if they are still interested in learning more then you can consider getting a better telescope that will last you for a decade. For this reason, we would recommend you to not invest too heavily at this point and stay in the under $100 range. Kid’s telescopes are cheap and are designed specifically so they can learn but they can be outgrown very quickly as they don’t have enough aperture or magnification to really look at objects beyond the moon and maybe a couple of planets. Telescopes that are designed with this simplicity in mind will be very limited in what they can do.Īnother thing to consider is the useful life span of the telescope. For example, the telescope can’t be too heavy or have too many moving or small parts. If you want them to use them by themselves then you are looking more in the category of toys rather than telescopes because there will be safety considerations to take. For kids in the 5-year-old range and younger it gets a bit more complicated as you have two possibilities: While there are telescopes specifically designed for children, most of the “real” telescopes are designed for 8 years old and up as they will have the ability to set them up, they can understand how to use them and they know how to take better care of their stuff. Skip to best recommendations Should kids 3 to 5 years old get a telescope?
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