Betty Botanista had turned Paige Ootabook into a glow frog and kept her as her only friend. Being turned into a frog is no croaking matter! If you turned into a frog, what would you look like?
Make: Your Very Own Frog Puppet
You will need:
A box with a folding lid (like a PG Tips tea box or a takeaway pizza box)
A pencil or a ruler
Some paper or card
Coloured pens, crayons or pencil
Step 1: Make a hole in the back of the box near the top and stick the pencil inside. Stick the pencil to the lid with Sellotape, leaving some of the pencil sticking out the back as a handle. You should now be able to lift the top of the box with the pencil handle.
Step 2: Cut some eyes and some feet out of card and stick them to the box. You can make them any shape and size you want.
Step 3: Colour the box in. Every frog in the world looks different. You can make your frog to look any way you want. You might want to make your frog spotty or stripey or in all different colours.
Step 4: Use the pencil as a handle to make the frog jump and croak.
Top Tip: If the box is hard to colour in, you could get an adult to wrap it in some paper, and colour that instead.
Activity: Turn Yourself Into A Frog
Look at this picture of a frog. Can you make your body into the same shape as the frog?
Frogs have big croaky chests and big bottoms. Maybe you can stuff some pillows or cushions to help you look more like a frog?
Can you jump like a frog too?
Get other family members to try and make themselves into frogs as well. Who looks the most like a frog?
Betty Botanist’s Magical Medicines
Betty Botanist makes many medicines from her Top Secret recipes. She makes the potion that saves Rapunzel’s life and makes her hair grow so long, and Gothel even tries to use one to put Rapunzel to sleep for a hundred years!
Let’s take a page from Betty’s Cook Book and make up Secret Recipes of our own.
You will need:
A pen and paper
If you want, you can use a bowl and several small cups with food colouring in, to make your potion come to life!
Activity: What Magic do you want your potion to create? Make a list of what the world needs more of.
What does the world need more of?
Then pick a potion title to match, something that is going to help make good things happen. For example, you could make the ‘Top Secret Kindness Serum, or the ‘Potion for Everlasting Courage’, or the ‘Talking Frog Tincture’.
Now for our ingredients list. What do you want to put in your potion? It could be anything you like!
If you’re not sure where to start, think about the thing you want to create more of (for example, kindness)? What is it made up of? What does it feel like? What examples of it can you think of? If it was a colour, what colour would it be?
Decide what makes kindness for you, and add those things like ingredients into your imaginary potion pot! If you’re not sure how much to add of each ingredient, use Betty’s measuring chart to help you out.
Betty Botanist’s Measuring Chart
For little magic
½ a teaspoon|
For big magic
A bathtub full
Once a day
Once a month
Once an hour
The first Monday of every January
Example: Top Secret Kindness Serum
½ teaspoon chocolate
A pinch freedom
A cup of presents
A bathtub full of cuddles on the sofa
Mix in Two Cups of Grandma’s Smile
Spit in 1/2 teaspoon laughter
And a pinch of fluffy kitten snuggles
Fold in a splash of your favourite jumper
And a whole ocean of love.
Take once a day, or as needed.
Bring them together, and read your recipe out loud as if it were a poem (perhaps, magically, it is).