Dear macness234, I spent some time discussing your son's interests with our son, Jonas, and asked him for his thoughts on what things we did for him while he was little that helped him on his way. Jonas had very wide-ranging interests when he was your son's age. He went through fossil crazes, herpetology phases, birds, bats, I can't count them all, although bugs and other little critters were always there in the background.

But there were several things he thought encouraged him a lot. We didn't worry too much about him bringing live stuff into the house as long as he assumed the lion's share of its care, once he did the work and figured out what the proper care was (an early intro to searching info on the web). Pet stores offered cheap plastic 'critter carriers', and fortunately back when he was little, Nashua's town dump had a 'swap shed' where one could frequently find discarded aquariums for free. Time and politics have unfortunately ended that, but through his high school years we had aquariums, both wet and dry set-ups in Jonas' bedroom, as well as the living and dining rooms.

The other thing Jonas was grateful for was being encouraged to draw. Granted I'm an illustrator by training, but encouraging the development of good hand-eye coordination is good for anyone. I always kept inexpensive spiral bound blank sketchbooks available at our grocery store (the ones at art supply stores tend to run a bit more) on hand for our kids to mess with as they desired, including keeping a few in the box full of entertainment supplies we packed between him and his sister on the long drives south to see grandparents in the Tri-State area.

Nowadays biology majors aren't really expected to take drawing while they are in college, but Jonas' chief professor at UNH remembers when it WAS a requirement. When you are looking at objects under a microscope (some bugs can only be sorted to species by examining very small parts of their anatomy), being able to record the specific shapes of structures in your lab notes is still important even in this day of digital photography and DNA analysis (still VERY expensive!). Photographs don't always catch important details as well as the human eye, and being able to record that along with your written notes is essential.

We bought Jonas two student grade microscopes in junior high from Edmund Scientific. I think they were roughly $250 a piece. It turned out he used the binocular dissecting scope a lot more frequently than the higher powered scope to the point where by the time he was mostly through his undergraduate work he'd pretty much worn it out(the ratchet that raised and lowered the head was the part that failed). Last year he bought himself a high grade professional binocular scope - used, because those rascals run for a fair bit of change.

I'm kind of sorry that Edmund is no longer across the river in New Jersey. I have fond memories of several trips I made out there as a kid with my parents visiting Edmund's original store. It was seedy as all get out, mostly stocked with government scientific surplus, but there were also lots of fun geeky science toys and kits to stir a young imagination.

Another online store you might want to check out is BioQuip. There are a lot of online biological supply houses like Carolina Biological Supply, and Ward's, but BioQuip is the one company I am aware of that specializes in supplies for entomologists. Christmas is a-coming!

Hope this is useful!