Brunk Children's Museum
Exhibits
The ticket booth was built by Ruben A. Helin, from Aland Finland in 1965.
The ticket booth surroundings include luggage and other information about Swedish Immigration. There are authentic artifacts in the trunks located next to booth. The window facing the left side leads into a ramp where the walls showcase educational murals depicting the process of immigration before arriving on the steamship.
This area shows the steamship located next to the mural scene of boat immigration. The steamship can be entered and return to land for a cabin stuga in Minnesota to be explored with other activities.
The ticket booth was built by Ruben A. Helin, from Aland Finland in 1965.
Interactive Displays
Engage with hands-on exhibits that encourage participation and learning through play. Our themed exhibits offer a unique and educational journey for children of all ages.
Our interactive displays spark creativity and curiosity, making learning a fun and immersive experience.
Murals
Our murals placed throughout the museum depict different aspects of the Swedish Immigration Journey including, preparing for travel, traveling by boat, buying tickets and also farming displays of the Swedish American experience.
Vättar are nature spirits common in Scandinavian mythology. Vättar often live underground and are invisible much of the time. They usually own cattle and are experts at milking their own cows and sometimes the cows of humans! Most of the time they stay away from humans but they can become very angry if they feel that they are not being respected. Often, humans will warn the vättar before doing something that can be dangerous.
Translates to: To this day the old spinning wheel spins, spins dreams of happiness once upon a time about two hearts that beat for each other and were married to the song of the bells.
Educational artifacts displayed to enrich children's knowledge in a fun and interactive way. There are artifacts placed around the museum with different facts and stories about their significance. Different stories and tales are written around along with prompt for play.
Artifacts
The Children’s Museum shows what life may have been like to live in a stuga (cottage) on a farm in Sweden in the 1800’s. It then takes you on the journey to America, showing your passport and getting your ticket and the ticket booth, embarking on a steamship, and arriving at an American homestead where you can pick vegetables from a garden and cook in a log cabin. In addition to the Swedish immigration story, it features a Viking ship and a corner dedicated to Swedish –American astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, with a countdown audio clip vibrating space ship seats.
Interactive Play
The Museum is filled with prompts for interactive play !
Journey To America
Your last look at Sweden is a lighthouse off the coast of the port city, Goteburg. Your adventure will take you to many places:
Guiding Questions:
Do you think you packed enough food and belongings for your entire journey? What will you do to entertain yourself while on the ship?
.• This ship first stops at the port city of Hull, England on the English Channel.
• From Hull, you must take a train across England to the town of Liverpool, where you will board another ship
• The boat you board in Liverpool will take you across the AtlanticOcean to New York Harbor.
• After the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, you will land at Castle Garden, New York, the most popular port of entry before 1892. For most immigrants to America, however, Ellis Island was the American port of entry they visited.
• After a short ferry ride across the harbor to New York City, you will board a train bound for Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Once you arrive in Minnesota, you need to set out on foot to find your Uncle Ivar's farm.
Life In America
Once you finally reach America, you must travel by train to Minneapolis, Minnesota. then you must walk the last few miles to your Uncle Ivar's log cabin, where you will live with him and his family.
Just like in Sweden, this family has a lot of work to do. Please help Uncle Ivar with his chores:
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Pick some vegetable from the garden to make dinner.
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Collect eggs from the chickens for breakfast
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Replant the garden
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Go Fishing in the stream.
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Ride the horse to town for new supplies.
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Draw water from the well.
Who Are The Vikings?
This sturdy long ship is just like the kind the Vikings used to explore new lands. The red and white woolen sail was raised on open seas to catch the wind, and the oars allowed the Vikings to quietly steer through shallow waters. These long ships were very fast and able to sail from Scandinavia to North America in less than a month!
The Vikings were the first Europeans to discover America, arriving 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Around the year 1000 A.D, Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, landed on the cast coast of Canada.Look inside the boxes aboard the long ship for more interesting and surprising Viking facts.
Guiding Questions:
Do you think you would like to row a Viking long ship across the ocean? Why or why not? Do the Viking clothes remind you of clothes people wear nowadays? What is the same and what is different?
Museum Highlights
