What's fun for a 5 year old with a telescope?

My oldest turned 5 today, and we got him a telescope since he is talking about the planets all the time and draws them and knows all their names.

I set it up and used it to look at a street sign, and even took a camera phone photo through it. Pretty neat.

We also used it tonight to look at the moon, and some bright stars. The moon is really interesting to look at, but stars just look like slightly bigger stars. I don't know much about finding planets like Venus and Jupiter and Saturn, but we'll have to try to look at them soon.

He will tell you his favorite planet is Uranus (which, let's be honest, is hilarious), so I'd like to try and find that one but I fear it could be a challenge.

But what other fun stuff can he do with a telescope? He's still maybe a bit young but if I can get him interested in using it he'll be better than me in 15 minutes.

Depends where you live.  Getting to a very dark area is obviously the best. There are some good apps you that are good star finders.  I have  Luminos.

One quick thing to try, without any help:  Identify the plane of the ecliptic.  Look where the sun rises, and where it sets, draw a line, that is the plane of the ecliptic (the plane the solar systems planets reside on).  Using that line, search along it.  Look for really bright stars, those are almost certainly planets.

Checking my app, Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus (that will be very dim, magnitude 6, Saturn is 1) are up for me right now.  

The moon of course is also on the same plane.  You could find the Sea of Tranquility and show him where the first men walked on the moon.

Naked chicks-wait...that's in about another 10 years.

Sirius is a binary star, so it's actually 2 distinct stars when you look at it through a telescope. Those are fun.

Looking at Jupiter and seeing it's moons.

The moon itself is probably the best and easiest.

Get a filter to look at the sun.

Tell him to look for Saturns

There's a good app for finding objects in the sky that works fantastic.  We've seen the Galilean moons and Saturn's rings, from my house front steps. 

Might be time for a trip to the Adler Planetarium! I’d assume someone there could help you figure out what can be done with your at home kit. 

The moon is fun, and easy if you're just getting used to the instrument.  Jupiter and Saturn are the coolest, IMO.  Also, heavens-above.com is a great site and gives you data on visible ISS passes and iridium flares.

Agree with above comment on finding the ecliptic.  I eyeballed two planets a couple nights ago, and I said to myself--"looks like Jupiter and Saturn."  Looks as if I was correct.  If it's red, it's probably Mars.  If it's very bright and close-ish to the sun, it's Venus.

For daytime stuff, if you live under a flight path for commercial jets, it's cool to see them zooming along at altitude, but probably easier to track them with binoculars.

I like SkyView, a free App.  Even saw the Hubble one night!

Download the ISS finder app to see when the space station is passing over you, we got an excellent flyover yesterday night

You want to buy The Stars:  A new way to see them, by HA Rey

Yes, that is the same guy who did Curious George, trust me on this one.  Get the book and a light with a red filter on it to save the night vision.

Right now is a decent time to see Jupiter and Saturn just after dark. Both are quite visible to the naked eye and very bright. Jupiter is brighter and just a few degrees right off south just after sunset. Saturn is ehhh... 30 or so degrees to the left and brighter than any start you'll see. Jupiter is fun, you can usually make out 3 or 4 moons and the stripes on the planet itself even with a low powered scope. Saturn's rings are cool but there isn't much detail until you get into the high powered stuff. I'll see if I can post a pic or two tonight.

If it is a manual telescope, then finding and keeping a planet in focus can be challenging, but it is well worth it. The first time I saw the rings of Saturn I was amazed. Seeing Jupiter's moons is also pretty cool.

Mars is kind of boring.

Excuse the poor photos. Turns out my iPhone SE isn’t best suited for night sky photography. 

Jupiter, taken just now 7:45pm western, facing SSE:

And I was off in my guessing earlier, Saturn is closer to Jupiter than I thought:

hard to see. I’ll get my scope out.

Again, poor photos but it gives an idea of what you can see at about 100x 

Jupiter and 3 moons. I can see 4 but my phone can’t  

Saturn, this photo doesn’t look good as you can’t see the distinction between rings and planet, much better IRL though: