Your child has decided they like space. Here is what to do about it that does not cost anything and does not involve buying a telescope you will both regret.
The single best thing you can do is go out on a clear night and look at the Moon. Not through anything — just look at it, and notice that the line between light and dark is rough. That is mountains. A child who has noticed that themselves is in a different relationship with astronomy than one who has been shown a photograph.
Two honest warnings. First: a cheap telescope with a wobbly tripod is worse than no telescope, because the image shakes and nobody can find anything. Binoculars you already own, braced against a fence, beat it easily. Second, and more important: manage expectations first. Every picture your child has seen of a nebula took hours of exposure on an instrument the size of a house. Through a small telescope, the same object is a pale grey smudge.
That is why every illustration on this site is drawn the way things really look through a small telescope, and never a photograph. A first look at Saturn should be a surprise, not a letdown — and it genuinely is a surprise. The rings look painted on.
For the nights it is cloudy, which is most of them:
They will, and it is the best question they will ask you. The honest answer is that people worked it out from the ground, one step at a time, starting with a stick in the sand. There is a page for each step, and each one ends in something you can try together.
Free, no advertising, no account, no tracking, no notifications and no streaks. It works with the network unplugged. It is deliberately not sticky: the mascot asks questions and never answers them, because the payoff is supposed to be going outside, not staying here.