Monroe County Museum

We had a chance to visit the museum in Bloomington during our visit. We had heard there was  a display dealing with segregation. While we assumed it was probably aimed at an older audience we decided to pop by anyways and I'm glad we did.  When we got there we found out they had a "Children in the Civil War" exhibit that was due to close. The museum guide also explained that the school room exhibit upstairs had handouts on the teacher's desk with a children's scavenger hunt for the museum. Once the girls completed the hunt they could turn it in for a prize or candy. With that motivation my gang was off!




They found the one room school house and the dunce hat, Hannah requested a picture in it, I promise I didn't make her pose in it. They sat in the desks in their bonnets and started their scavenger hunts.




Next they visited a log cabin with lots of hands on activities. The scavenger hunt had them looking for a cougar. We checked in the beds for furs and the cross stitch on the wall for images, finally we found a full sized stuffed cougar hiding behind a curtain!
The Civil War display included pictures, artifacts and clothing from the time period. There were first hand accounts and explanations of what the children in the North and South experienced. Since most of the large battles took place in the South, the Southern children were surrounded by fighting and bullets, they saw their homes turned into hospitals or worse, burned to the ground. The children in the North were needed to work and help on the farms, businesses and homes since the men had gone to war. They held bake fairs to raise money for the war effort.
One section of the exhibit had instructions and supplies to make "rag dolls" like the children would have played with at this time. They were literally made of rags you stuffed with cotton and tied together with ribbon. After you built one you got to take it home with you so each girl made one.
And then there was the bear.




The scavenger hunt said find the bear and that wasn't hard at all! He was 9 ft tall and looked so soft. They had a patch of his fur on the write up in front of him but when you patted it he roared, we all jumped! They also had a voting booth for the kids to vote for a name for the bear to be decided in March. One girl voted for Wiley, the other Kody (he was a Kodiak Bear in his livelier days) and I thought Roary was the best on the ballot.
Hunt completed we headed downstairs to claim their prizes. The gift shop was full of books and cards, soaps and candy jars. They were allowed to pick the candy stick flavor of their choice and then time to head home.