Minnesota Children’s Museum

We've been meaning to take a trip down to St. Paul to visit the Minnesota Children's Museum for years and years, and never got around to it.  Last summer when I renewed our regular local children's museum membership, I decided that this would be the year, and I bought the upgraded version that allows our family to visit any affiliated children's museum in the country, including the big one in St. Paul.  Since there was no school yesterday because it was Martin Luther King Day, and Dr. Peds was post call and desperate for a trip to the twin cities, we decided to make a day trip.  

We navigated the parking ramp and the first thrill of the day was riding in an elevator with a glass window to get to the skywalk.  Very exciting.  The Minnesota  Children's Museum is enormous.  It was humming with people.  After we checked in and got our stickers, we decided that a quick lunch was in order at a little fast food restaurant next door.  There were people and kids and kids everywhere.  Ya Ya doesn't handle crowds well at all and didn't think the whole idea was good at all, but once we actually got inside the museum she was hooked.  The Banana and Mr. SP were so excited that they could hardly eat their lunch.  

In the museum we made our own paper, climbed trees, investigated water hydraulic systems, worked in a factory, performed a shadow puppet show, drove a bus, worked in a restaurant, shopped at a market, created our own dance video (in a blue screen studio), mailed letters at a post office  and collected them, explored dinosaurs, climbed trees, made a fairy house, tunneled with ants, watched real turtles, played like beavers and woodchucks, created a thunderstorm, and did so many other things.  

There were so, so many people.  At one point, Dr. Peds said to me, "I didn't realize there were this many children in the WORLD."  Even though it was crowded and incredibly crazy, it didn't phase the kidlets.  They had so much fun exploring.  I don't think they've played so hard for months.  They had the best time.  We stayed all afternoon until the very last minutes the museum was open (we might have even been the last people to leave.)  The last hour was the very best because the crowd was diminishing.  We had to worry about loosing people less, and we had some great opportunities to really interact with the exhibits.  Our friends the Rexines joined us at the museum for the last two hours or so, and we had a super time visiting and playing with them (although we had to have some crowd control systems in place to keep track of seven kids going ten different directions).  

One of Ya Ya's favorite parts was the water section, where you could turn valves and control the flow of water through different systems.  At the end of our visit when she had more of a chance to work the valves herself she spent a ton of time very focused on problem solving.  Mr. SP loved EVERYTHING, but the highlights of the visit for him seemed to be the chance to pet a real rat, and the magnificent costumes that accompanied every section of the museum.  He was a fireman, a policeman, an airline pilot, an ant, a beaver, a robin, a lizard, a moth, a dinosaur, and more.  The Banana liked working in the kid sized Asian restaurant, which was just a hoot.  That kitchen was humming, and it was all so realistic.  

Here's my dinosaur sitting on his nest of eggs.  He hatched out seven batches of eggs while we were in the dinosaur exhibit.  What a busy dad!

The Banana was thrilled to work the cash register at the Asian restaurant.  She does love money.  In this image she was trying to sell me a high quality onion.  At least I could take comfort in the fact that it was plastic.  And scentless.