Dig it! Biggest children’s museum exhibit yet explores construction trades | Local News

Wayne Passon took a seat in a retrofitted excavator Wednesday alongside his grandson 3-year-old Travis Stolt, and the two started digging.

Their rig, along with their construction site, was part of a newly opened exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota. Known as Dig It!, the museum’s largest exhibit to date highlights construction trades with hands-on activities for children ranging from the excavator to a tower crane to a drone.

Passon and his grandson come to the museum just about every week. In recent months they saw museum staff readying the intriguing new exhibit.

With Travis’ father working for Holtmeier Construction, Passon said the exhibit is perfect for both Travis and his older brother.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “They get to do what their dad does.”

And Passon gets to see how much fun they have. Spending more time with his four grandchildren is what led Passon to retire from his job after being diagnosed with ALS last fall.

Other grandparents and parents at the museum Wednesday shared his enthusiastic reaction to the exhibit. Community members got a look at it Tuesday night during a private unveiling, followed the next day by the official opening.

The exhibit, which will be at the museum for the next year, is both a workforce development initiative and an interactive play experience for children, said Louise Dickmeyer, the museum’s CEO.

“Giving kids that hands-on experience, be a part of the equipment and move it, hear it and feel it, is going to be really powerful,” she said.

She credited Deb Johnson, vice president of museum operations, with coming up with the idea. Pulling it all together involved partnering with four area construction companies — Holtmeier, Lorentz, Mathiowetz and Cemstone — along with South Central College.

The museum acquired a used excavator and retrofitted it to make it safe for children. Staff and partners fabricated a working tower crane, created a space for a drone to lift off and descend on a track, fashioned conveyor belts demonstrating materials for road building, and created an activity for mixing batches of concrete.

The crane was an early hit with Chelsea Wingen’s three children Wednesday.

“My boys are farm kids, so they love anything and everything that has to do with machinery and digging and all this,” the Good Thunder mother said. “Since they started working on it, they’ve been intrigued by it.”

Her family comes to the museum once or twice per week, so anticipation for the exhibit grew in the lead up to the opening.

“It’s wonderful for the community to have something like this, not only for the kids but I think it’s also fun for the adults,” she said.

Ryan Holicky, of St. Peter, said his daughter was having fun at the exhibit Wednesday, then his three sons are eager to check out the crane and excavator after school Thursday when the museum stays open later.

“They’ve been reminding me for the last week and a half to come,” he said. “They had it marked on the calendar.”

For more information, go to www.cmsouthernmn.org/dig-it-exhibit.