Hi Paul
I bought a pair of Puffins for my niece (when she was 5 so older than your kid), the RSPB range do a selection
https://shopping.rspb.org.uk/childrens-binoculars/ otherwise I have passed on an old pair of Hawkes pocket binoculars to my friends son (age 7 so again older). I’ve also worked with groups of kids (age 5-11) on nature walks and based on my experience, for this age group, I’d recommend binoculars with a wide field eyepiece and large depth of field (perhaps 6 x 30 or 6 x 20) which would make it easier to locate subject and to track it
- However, for a child age 2-3 years, I would go for a compact autofocus -
I have found kids are actually pretty adept at using binoculars ie finding things in them, if you give clear field references to the location of the subject you want them to see - but I find it hard to judge whether they are focussing properly and have found sometimes the ‘focus’ part of ‘point and focus’ is a slightly harder concept for them to learn. For a very young child therefore, because of the issue around focussing, and because of short attention span, dropping stuff etc, I would probably go for a cheap pair of autofocus perhaps like Mahauk Compacts
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mahauk-Compact-Binoculars-Children-Lightweight/dp/B0787LHVM7. If you want a shorter focussing range, an auto focus might not be suitable as they don’t work at close range so if it is just for the garden, there are plenty of relatively cheap binos out there for kids - such as on the RSPB link or on Amazon such as these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/National-G...60&hvtargid=pla-562043876093&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
( I wouldn’t be worried too about image quality at that age tbh and would probably go with cheap and cheerful since they will probably end up being left out in the garden at some stage
)
