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Climb a tree.

Build a fort out of sheets, sticks and a few big boards.

Turn crab apples into sidewalk chalk.

Or fill your pockets full of rocks, shells, feathers, acorns, even seaweed. Don't put them through the wash. It'll ruin everything. Put them in a bowl and keep it nearby to remind you that wonders are right outside your back door.

That's what Liz Baird did when her science-teacher mom called her "Lizards Gizzards." Liz kept a wooden bowl of her nature finds in her room and completed her homework seated 7 feet up in a backyard sugar maple as patches of sunlight flitted through the leaves of the tree.

Baird doesn't climb trees anymore. But she still has her nature bowl. She calls it her Wonder Bowl. It's made of clay, sits on a ledge in her office in Raleigh and holds a collection that "Lizards Gizzards" would like.

Fossil shark teeth. A small piece of broken coral. A snow goose feather. And a seed, three inches long, taken from a mamay apple tree in Belize, that feels as smooth as a plank of polished mahogany.

So, it shouldn't surprise anybody that Baird is the brains behind Take a Child Outside Week. At the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, she deals with excavating wonder for school kids to see almost every day.

But for Take a Child Outside Week, she got the idea by walking Toby, her golden retriever. It was a beautiful spring night - low humidity, chirping crickets and stars beginning to blink.

And not a child in sight.

Baird looked toward the front windows of every house she passed in her neighborhood in the town of Holly Springs, and she saw the glow of a TV screen.

Back at the museum, she brought up the idea of setting aside a week to get kids outside. Then, with no Web site, no logo, no planned activities, she and her museum staff announced it to see what would happen.

That was last year. Today, Baird's idea has taken off: 250 partners in 46 states, involving at least 2,000 children, with Puerto Rico, Canada, England, and the Central American country of Belize getting involved.

This year it all starts on Wednesday - in Greensboro and almost everywhere else.

"It seems like such a simple idea, and I wasn't really convinced 100 percent that it would work," says Baird, who directs school programs at the museum. "Who am I to declare a Take a Child Outside Week? We didn't poll people. We announced it. And it worked."

It worked because it struck a chord.

Technology and busy lifestyles have stopped a generation from bounding so freely out the back door. And now, study after study shows us that the youngest around us have become depressed, distracted and overweight.

But not Brian Beckham.

He keeps a Chinese bearded dragon named Pepper in his room. He also catches lizards. And he counts them. He's caught 110 in Georgia, Florida, Jamaica and 42 steps from his back door.

He and his older sister, Amy, hit the woods every day behind their house near Greensboro's Claxton Elementary School. She snaps pictures, and Brian catches lizards with his sister, his spotter.

Why? They're both quick with answers.

"It feels good to be outside in the fresh air,'' says Amy, 13. "There are not many people around."

"And we don't play video games and get fat," interjects Brian, 10. "There's enough stuff to do back there. We get dirty. And Mom can't tell us to do homework."

Brian and his lizards. Amy and her camera. Liz and her Wonder Bowl.

"Lizards Gizzards." She'll always be curious.

"That," she says, "is part of my job."

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com