Minnesota Children's Museum

We started off early this morning to make it over the Mississippi River to St. Paul and the Minnesota Children's Museum. After navigating through major construction and lots of one-way streets, we made it to the museum four our tour. The museum is quite large - about 65,000 square feet spread out over five floors. The top floor contained a roof garden with plants chosen (and provided by a local nursery) for their scents, a tree house, sand pit and an indoor craft center.

The fourth floor was set up as an Earth Center with a fantastic Ant Farm exhibit were the kids got to put on ant costumes and work their way through the (kid sized) ant farm tunnels. It also included an animal area where they keep turtles, fish and snakes that they use in educational programs during the day. This Earth Center was one of my favorite exhibits at the museum. This floor also contained a Habitot center for babies ages 6 to 48 months that was based on the four natural eco-centers in the state. This area also had a quiet book room where parents and kids could have a quiet break.

The third floor held their meeting room where they hold birthday party celebrations. They can also rent out the room or use it for visiting classes. There is a large Exhibit Hall there that is being prepared for a science exhibit on circles. This museum has a basemment where they actually create many of their smaller exhibits that they use and rent out to other children's museums across the country.

The second floor was my favorite it contained a Paper Factory, the team-building crane area, the water section, another craft center and my favorite area of all - Our World. Our world was an enclosed area that represented the town environment, with a market, a Vietnamese restaurant, a Uniform store (where kids could become police or fire officers, doctors, and more), a TV studio, a medical center and other areas. That was the most crowded area in the museum with a lot of interactive play going on between all of the kids.

The second floor also held their smaller exhibit area. This is where they are currently holding a Clifford exhibit. This was a large, multi part exhibit that they created at the Minnesota Children's Museum over five years ago. It has been travelling for five years and is now finally back home and on display.

The museum has 350 active volunteers, with about 50 teen volunteers that they use during the summer. They have a full-time staff of 50 people and a part-time staff of 50 as well, that handle marketing, admin and finance, visitor staff, education, exhibit staff and creating, and membership and events. They have a crew of staff members who routinely go through the museum just to clean and sanitize areas. We must have seen at least three staff doing this while we were there.

Really an amazing, professional, yet incredibly user-friendly place!