Bigger, Better, Bolder: All-New Minnesota Children’s Museum

This awesome day of adventure for the Grand Re-Opening of the Minnesota Children’s Museum was brought to you in exchange of a complimentary museum membership. All opinions are my own.

If there’s anything I missed more this winter other than seeing green grass, it was the Minnesota Children’s Museum. Much to this active child parent’s dismay, the museum closed for the winter for upgrades and a remodel. In hindsight, I am so glad they did because it’s back and it is better than EVER.

The Minnesota Children’s Museum had it’s official re-open to the public on June 7th. I brought my sister and nephew with to take a sneak peek a few days ago and experience all of the brand new exhibits. From my 18 month old nephew to my almost 6 year old daughter, both kids were completely entertained and having a blast.

The first thing Bean did? Draw all over her face at the Creativity Jam exhibit. Wouldn’t be a visit to the MN Children’s Museum without a face full of scribbles 😉 She said they were her “goggles”.

Next we visited the Sprouts exhibit for kids 3 and under. It was so perfect for my nephew, and Bean even had some fun (while watching out for the “little kids” of course) in the tunnels and at the water table.

Next up was the exhibit Bean was the most excited about: The Scramble! Silly mom, socks were required and I forgot that she was wearing sandals. Fortunately, they sell socks at the museum gift shop in bright and fun colors so you can track your kiddo as they climb.

I couldn’t BELIEVE how tall it was and how much there was for kids to climb! The Scramble is a four-story structure with multiple towers for the kids to climb and a huge, FAST (did I say fast?) twisty slide. It’s best suited for kids age five and older, but they also have a smaller structure by the stairs for younger tots to climb.

The structure looked big looking down on it from the second level, but standing at the bottom of the slide waiting to catch Bean and looking up it’s almost intimidating how tall it is! The kids literally shot out of the slide, it was a never ending giggle fest for everyone involved (me included) 😉

This was, by far, both mine and Bean’s favorite exhibit. You could repeatedly hear parents observing their kids saying, “Yeah, they’ll definitely sleep good tonight!“. That’s the key to success right there 😉

A few other awesome areas to let the kids tire themselves out: the carpet skate park and green screen climbing wall. Bean looked so cute in her little helmet sliding down the carpet slopes 🙂

After doing some intense physical activity we visited the Forces at Play exhibit and shot ping pong balls into the air and gave a car a wash. You know, normal museum activities 😉

The last exhibit that both kiddos loved was “Our World”. Bean got to pretend she was a mail person, fire fighter, and a hardware store owner (those were her favorite jobs). My nephew really got a kick out of the light switch wall. What toddler doesn’t love to flip switches constantly?

We spent the longest time that we EVER have at the Minnesota Children’s Museum that day. Not because it was too busy, but because the kiddos were having too much fun! They didn’t want to leave (and I didn’t really want to either).

I can’t say enough great things about the new and improved Minnesota Children’s Museum. We can’t wait for the next rainy summer day so that we can visit and tire ourselves out again 🙂