This activity is a great way to discover what’s happening right outside in your own backyard. Kids get messy and learn too? A double win.

You’ll need two to three pieces of thin cardboard for the experiment (pieces of old cereal boxes work well). The night before, I painted them yellow so that we’d be able to see anything that clung onto them better than against the brown.

When I told Travis we were going to smear vaseline onto the cardboard, he couldn’t believe his luck. (For a non-petroleum option, try Alba). Goopy!

I punched a hole in each piece of cardboard and we hung them around our grassy patio area. You can hang just one, or hang several in different sections of your yard if you want to note differences between the pieces.

Now we wait! As we waited, we wrote down guesses of what the wind might blow our way. Travis suggested paper airplanes, so I wrote down “paper” – not too far-fetched as paper from the mail kiosk sometimes blows our way on a very windy day.

After an hour or so, go check it out! Truthfully, we didn’t find much. The most we got was a bit of dirt and what might have been a tiny bug (oops!).

But Travis proudly scribbled our “results.”