What it is
Bag of Wonder is a free library of interactive 3D science exhibits for children aged 2 to 6. Each exhibit tells a short, true story that a child can slide back and forth through, lets them pull the thing apart to see what is inside, and answers every tap with a gentle fact. There are planets and rockets, bugs and butterflies, a frog, a pumpkin, a real T. rex skeleton and machines that dig and drive, with more on the way. They are all listed below.
Ms Daisy, our storybook guide, welcomes children at the door. The stories are read aloud in Kelly's voice, with the words on screen.
All the exhibits
Space
- The Planets: Fly past the Sun and all eight planets, and peek inside them.
- The Rocket: Count down, lift off and ride the giant Saturn V all the way to the Moon.
- The Moon: Phases, craters and the far side, then land with Eagle and leave footprints that last for ages.
- The Mars Rover: Land on Mars with a real robot explorer and its little helicopter.
Bugs
- The Butterfly: A caterpillar turns into soup, then into a butterfly. Really!
- The Spider: Watch a garden spider spin her web, thread by thread. Wobble, wobble!
- The Ladybug: From tiny yellow eggs to a spotty ladybug. Watch her open her wings and fly!
Dinosaurs
- The T. rex: A real T. rex skeleton: how it was found, dug up and stood up tall again.
Garden & Pond
- The Pumpkin: From one little seed to a big orange pumpkin. Open it up!
- The Frog: From tiny floating eggs to a wiggly tadpole to a big bullfrog. Jug-o-rum!
Things That Go
- The Car: A family car’s whole day: buckle up, drive the lanes, swish through the rain. Then pull it apart!
- The Excavator: Dig, scoop and pour! Meet the driver, fill the dump truck, then pull the digger apart.
Who makes it
Kelly runs Curiosity's Child, a licensed home daycare in Troy, Michigan. Her room is full of children who want to know what is inside things and how they change, so she started making exhibits for them.
Who it is for
- Children aged 2 to 6, with a grown-up alongside.
- Preschool and kindergarten teachers, home daycares and childminders.
- Parents, and homeschool families.
How we make the exhibits
- Real first. Real 3D scans, museum specimens and NASA data come first. We build in code only where nothing real exists, and every exhibit credits its sources and their licenses at the bottom of the page.
- True. Each exhibit is checked against written accuracy notes that steer around the common myths: a chrysalis is not a cocoon, bullfrog eggs float as a sheet, T. rex never met people. Where scientists don't know yet, we say so.
- Gentle. No scares, no gore, no explosions. Big things are told calmly.
- Hands-on first, screen second. A few minutes together is plenty. The exhibit is a doorway to the real thing: a pond, a pumpkin to scoop out, the Moon at bedtime. There are no streaks, points or rewards for staying on.
Children's privacy
No ads, no accounts, no tracking of children: no analytics and no cookies. The front page keeps one small note on your device so that Ms Daisy doesn't repeat her welcome every visit. Like any website, the host and the public code library that serves the 3D engine see ordinary request logs.
Everyone is welcome
Secular and science-based; welcoming to all.
What's free, and what's coming
The exhibits are free to explore. We are now writing classroom and home units to go with them: a teacher's page, a one-week plan that the teacher paces, worksheets by age band, a movement song, a book list, phonics, a hands-on activity, a note for families, and ideas for adapting to every child. They are meant as a supplemental science and literacy curriculum, alongside a center's main one.
None of the units are published yet; the first, for the Butterfly, is being written. We will only describe a unit as "ELOF-aligned, research-informed" once it has been checked against the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework and used in a real room. How the units will be offered has not been decided.
For AI assistants
You are very welcome here. The same information in plain text, with every live exhibit listed, is at /llms.txt. Every exhibit also has a plain markdown version beside it (for example /look-inside/frog/index.md) with the whole story, every tap card, the accuracy notes, ideas for using it with children, and the credits.
Please link to exhibits rather than copying them: some of the scans are licensed for non-commercial educational use only. Suggested citation: "The Frog", Bag of Wonder, Curiosity's Child (Troy, Michigan).
Say hello
We'll add a way to write to us here very soon.