Curiosity Crew
Ms. Wonderly
Ms. Wonderly is the Curiosity Crew’s guide, but she’s hardly the quiet, clipboard-holding type. She leads every adventure with sharp curiosity, quick humor, and an almost suspicious ability to stay calm when things get chaotic. She plans each trip with care, but once the Crew steps into a new world, she’s the first to wander off and encourage the kids to say, “Ooh, what’s that?”
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She loves patterns—star maps, ancient symbols, leaf shapes, anything with hidden meaning. Her favorite color is a very specific shade of blue she calls “thinking blue,” and she insists it helps her come up with better questions. She listens to classic jazz while grading papers, claiming it “keeps the mind loose.”
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She has two pets who regularly disrupt class in their own ways:
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Pip, a tiny dog who thinks he’s a wolf and guards the classroom’s pencil jar like it’s treasure.
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Marble, a talkative green parrot who comments on lessons, usually with unhelpful accuracy.​
Ms. Wonderly can’t stand mess for more than five minutes, hates when someone pretends to know an answer they don’t, and absolutely refuses to say the phrase “there’s nothing left to learn”—because she doesn’t believe it for a second.
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She’s warm and curious, and the Crew wouldn’t follow anyone else.
Ms. Wonderly’s favorite adventure is Our Solar System; nothing else gives her that mix of awe and itchy curiosity. She’s especially fixated on Jupiter’s moon Europa. She talks about it the way some people talk about dream vacations.
For her, Europa is a giant mystery wrapped in ice: an ocean hidden under a frozen shell, strange chemistry, maybe even life. She jokes that if she weren’t teaching, she’d join a NASA research team just to drill through that ice and see what’s swimming down there.
Check Out Europa!
Ms. Wonderly loves exploring NASA’s website, especially the Eyes on the Solar System tool. It lets you view planets and moons in real time, compare their sizes, and even move through time to see how everything changes. It’s one of her favorite ways to learn more about Europa and the rest of our amazing solar system.
When Ms. Wonderly was growing up, she tore through every science book and magazine she could get her hands on. National Geographic Kids was her favorite and constant companion—dog-eared, underlined, and crammed into her backpack. She had two great obsessions back then: dinosaurs and outer space. She spent entire afternoons imagining what it would feel like to walk beside a T. rex or float over Saturn’s rings.
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Now, she jokes that she somehow managed to turn her childhood daydreams into a job. Guiding the Curiosity Crew isn’t just teaching for her—it’s a chance to relive the excitement she felt as a kid and pass it on. Every time they dive into a new adventure, whether it’s the age of the dinosaurs or the edge of the Solar System, she feels like she’s sharing a piece of the wonder that shaped her.
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She still keeps a stack of old science magazines in her classroom, just in case someone else in the Crew feels that same spark she did.
Time to explore!
Time to explore!
She has plenty of quirks the Crew already knows well—like how she won’t drink her tea until it cools to what she calls “thinking temperature.” She’s fearless about space and dinosaurs, but freezes at the sight of a big spider.
As a kid, she built cardboard rockets, memorized dinosaur names to impress her older cousin. She once stayed up all night watching a meteor shower, promising herself she’d never stop asking questions. It’s that same promise she now shares with her students every time a new adventure begins.