The Ultimate Guide to Your Microscope, by Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone is a 144-page softcover book covering lenses, lighting, slide-making and what to look for in various samples. Heavily illustrated with color photography. Don't take the scope out of its box without this book.

Is that a pencil in your pocket, and wouldn't you like a little stubby highlighter that didn't take up so much room? Our each is (2) neon-yellow markers with 1/8" tips in soft-grip housings just 2-5/8" long x 1" oval, with a little slot on the cap for a chain if you want to wear them on a string or attach them to a key ring. And why wouldn't you?

This is your chance to own a genuine cow magnet. Fed to cows by vets and farmers to attract the odd metallic parts of cows' diets (they tend to scarf up nails, staples and other stuff with the grass) and prevent bovine traumatic reticuloperitonitis, also known as hardware disease. Used for lots of magnetic lab experiments because they're so handy. In plated alnico, 3" long x 1/2" dia in a rounded tubular shape. Approx a 5-lb pull.

But cheap. Just the thing for anyone interested in life off our home planet. You pick from our 5” x 3-1/2” (passport size) 50-page notebooks. The Moon Passport has blank, ruled pages with a small moon phase in the corners plus a bonus fold-out lunar map and chart; and the Mars Passport has blank pages with 3/16” square grids and some fun Martian facts on the inside back cover. And no, sadly, they are not yet approved for actual space travel.

This piratical treasure trove is printed on genuine pretend parchment (from a process that involves skinning ersatz sheep). The 15-3/4" x 13-3/4" Treasure Map shows (56) actual lost treasure sites from Newfoundland to Bermuda. Call us when you finish looking. The 11" x 14" Pirates Creed of Ethics (the apostrophe was sunk along with the treasures), is a faux vellum document with a putatively real pirates' code from 1640 with (14) principles, many of which involve getting one's head split for infractions. Both profusely illustrated.

Sounds like a Portuguese percussion album, but it’s just an alnico bar magnet in a mount that lets it rotate freely to demonstrate the three-dimensional magnetic field. Ideal for experiments about forces between magnetic poles, fields around wire and coils, and the properties of fields produced by electric currents. Also handy as part of your ghost-hunting gear.

These Kooties™ are impish little trademarked critters, and in this case they’re on the hardboard covers of these mini-notebooks. Measure 3-1/4” square, top-spiral bound with (71) sheets in each with little Kooties and Kuotes in the Korners. We’ll pick from the (7) assorted Kooties™ on the covers, but they’re all kute. Kinda.

Or want to teach kiddies to write like Dickens or draw like Michalengelo? Start with blank, staple-bound 28-page paperbacks with bright white, 80-lb paper stock pages and card-stock blank covers. You pick: the 7” x 8-1/2” books or the 8-1/2” x 11” book, both with un-ruled pages because when you're young, staying between the lines isn't the thing to do.

If the question is whether to tie a bunch of these giant latex professional weather balloons to a lawn chair, the answer is no. (The balloon bursts at about 82,000 feet anyway.) This is a true high altitude weather balloon, with plenty of fun, nonfatal uses. The cream-colored latex balloon is approx 60" dia when flaccid, you should pardon the expression, but has an 14-foot dia when inflated. The neck is 9" long x 3" dia. Scientists and meteorologists launch balloons to measure atmospheric conditions like wind speed and air pressure for weather forecasting, but clever inventors, teachers and the imaginative filmmaker are warned to launch the balloon carefully. The synthetic rubber material is delicate and not made to survive brushes with pavement, pine branches, or clumsy physics students. Have fun, and launch safely.

Little-bitty horseshoe magnet, for traditionalists. Just 1-1/4" across x 1" x 5/16" thick. Red-painted Alnico, with approx 2.9 lbs of pull (ignore the 2 lb on the label) it includes a little steel keeper for when it's not sticking to a tiny horse's foot.

This 10-piece set of 1" cubes is made to test density in the classroom, and by all means you should do that. Otherwise, how will the children ever understand density? But we like to just play with the cubes, to set them on a desk, or stack them, or line them up, or make shapes out of them, or just pick them up and marvel at their weight differences. You get perfect cubes of aluminum, steel, brass, copper, acrylic, oak, nylon, pine, poplar and PVC.

Ceramic magnets, 15/16" dia x 3/16" thick. One side has a 5/16" sq that goes through to a steel plate is octagonal, 9/16" across with a 3/16" dia hole in the center. The plate allows flexible mounting of the 3/4 lb lift magnet. The other interesting feature is that the ceramic appears to have many poles around the rim, (4 ea N and S). This may be a focussing effect of the insert, though.

We like The Usborne Book of Science Activities a whole bunch. It’s volume one of the Helen Edom and Kate Woodward series, a 74-page hardcover that includes experiments with water, magnets, light and mirrors, with plenty of puzzles and projects--profusely illustrated, throughout. Handy for keeping your young one's mind in shape when not in school or as family learning projects.

The human body is a puzzle, really. Get a head-start on anatomy class with one of these anatomically correct breakaway models in authentically colored plastic with detailed cross-sections. Pick the 2" tall, 7-piece eyeball; the 3-1/2" tall, 6-piece human heart; or the 3-3/8" tall, 6-piece rubber and plastic human head/skull/brain. All stand on 3" square bases.

Like doodling, daydreaming and napping, coloring books are for everyone. These delightful (40)-page books from Kathy Ireland®, printed in the USA just like Kathy, have 7-1/2" x 10-7/8" perforated sheets for children and adults of all ages. Themes of books include gardens, flowers, patterns, mandalas and animals. Originally $7.99 each, we’ll send you (2) different ones for not much more than that. Surplus!

Or are you just under heavy pressure to start writing right now! We know, we know. That’s why our copywriters always buy these pre-sharpened #2 pencils, to get those terrible jokes down on paper ASAP. And yes, they have erasers because sometimes we’re not funny, and we all make mistakes. In packs of (12) at 7-3/8” long.

Physics project alert! This robust puppy of a magnet has dual 6V coils and stands 4" high x 3-1/4" wide, not counting the side terminals. Each coil draws 2.4A at 6VDC, and is conservatively rated for 40 Newtons (approx 9 lbs) at that voltage. Can be wired in either parallel or series, and comes with a mounting hook. Works great with a 6-volt lantern battery.

You win some, you lose some? No need to keep switching pens when you have this two-headed ball point pen with a black cartridge at one end and a red one at the other. Perfect for those hand-held profit and loss statements.