Lincoln Children’s Museum

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Ag exhibit at Lincoln Children’s Museum brings farm life to the city



LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - The tall buildings and traffic of Lincoln don’t fully reflect Nebraska’s reputation as an agricultural state. The Lincoln Children’s Museum is giving children a taste of the ag industry with a new exhibit called “Here We Grow.”

“Everybody saw the need for this at the (Lincoln) Children’s Museum and saw the need to kind of connect children back to the agricultural world,” said Ken Dobbs, the museum’s chief development officer. “Here We Grow” features a water table that teaches children about irrigation, a combine cab, a poultry education area and many other hands-on opportunities. “Too many times children hear, ‘Get down from there,’ but here, they nothing is off limits,” said Tara Knuth, CEO. This world is especially fascinating to Josh and Maddie Meyer’s toddler, who is instantly drawn to the pig and cow models. “The ag exhibit is definitely his favorite,” Maddie said, sitting in the combine cab with her husband and son. “We head down here first, and then see if he decides to go anywhere else.”

Josh and Maddie farm in the Elmwood-Murdock area, so their son is familiar with rural living. “He’s one and a half, and he’s rode in pretty much everything - the tractors, combine, sprayer,” Josh said. But for kids who have never been on a farm, the “Here We Grow” exhibit may be their first exposure to the elements of agriculture. “In our ‘Here We Grow’ exhibit, we have a tractor they can climb on,” Knuth said. “We have water exhibits. We have eggs that are not going to break.” Museum leaders began planning out the stations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The $1.4 million project took four years and many donors to complete, with help from the Nebraska Farm Bureau. “They also gave us their time in making sure all of the content and what we were doing was accurate because we wanted to get it right,” Dobbs said.

If you would like to bring your child to the “Here We Grow” exhibit, the Lincoln Children’s Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.