BLOG The Crabbies!

CrabbieMasters Website for Preschool Parents and Teachers Wins The Teacher’s Corner ‘Award of Excellence’

CrabbieMasters is truly honored to be recognized as the winner of a 2006 ‘Award of Excellence’ as a teacher’s resource from The Teacher’s Corner – a highly recognized award-winning educational website. In considering candidates for selection, The Teacher’s Corner looks for resources, “that really stand out and make a strong web presence.”

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) June 1, 2006 — This is much appreciated recognition for Becky Undlin, the creator of CrabbieMasters, “My lifelong dream was always to be a teacher and I absolutely loved working with children in elementary school. Now, it’s great to see that The Crabbies and related ideas that I originally came up with for preschoolers are being seen as beneficial for other teachers too.”

It’s not just for teachers though. Other adults too – parents, daycare providers, home schoolers – anyone working with young children can benefit from learning about The Crabbies. For the uninitiated, The Crabbies are an irksome band of eight…actually The Eight Most Wanted…Crabbies – imaginary, fun and colorful characters that just love to try to sneak in and ruin a group of kids (and adults) perfectly fine day. The great part is that for kids (and adults) in the know, they just love to stop them right in their claw-tracks because they’ve already learned how to “BEAT The Crabbies!” and “Turn their day around!”

For the summer, Undlin uses CrabbieMasters and a leadership program she calls Kids-In-Charge with the older school age children who come back during summers. Undlin thinks these would be great resources for families over the summer too. If anyone ever has questions on anything there are discussion forums and Undlin is happy to answer email too.

Awards like this are really great says Undlin. “At least it gives us a feeling that we’re on the right track. We’ve always known The Crabbies look cool to the kids and we all know we can “BEAT The Crabbies!” virtually any day of the week. Every child in my preschool for almost twenty years has loved them. But we had no idea if we could get the word out with a website and make it good enough for other people to relate to.” Undlin says she is glad there are people out there like The Teacher’s Corner who take the time to evaluate resources and let others know what they think. Because of them, people can find out about things they never would have heard of.

Other recognition since launching www.crabbiemasters.com a few months ago includes:

* Parent To Parent www.AddingWisdomAward.com
* www.CoolSiteOfTheDay.com
* Cool Sites @ www.foxchicago.com
* Site of the Day @ www.specialchildren.com

At this point, there’s only one major problem – like the proverbial “better mousetrap” – no one knows how great it is until the word gets out.

“No one” might be a bit of an overstatement though. In just four months CrabbieMasters has had over 6,000 visits and many come back repeatedly. But, as Undlin puts it, “We just know that there are literally millions of people who could really enjoy teaching their children how to Beat The Crabbies. Plus, the website includes many other early child development skills I’ve learned to teach young children over the years.”

For the record, CrabbieMasters includes a large section on advanced skills called “Beyond The Crabbies” that can be used to teach young children about using good behavior skills, how to have good attitudes, how to work well with others, how to be a good leader, and more. These teachings, supported by concepts that have been proven in Undlin’s preschool for many years, include U.L.T.I.M.A.T.E. Skills (Understanding, Listening, Teamwork…), becoming WiseOnes, Kids-In-Charge and the like.

CM

CrabbieMasters Website for Parenting Preschoolers Wins 2006 Parent-to-Parent ‘Adding Wisdom Award’

CrabbieMasters is a very happy and proud winner of this prestigious award. “Parent to Parent Adding Wisdom Award™ is the only award program to ever be honored by Disney.com.” The fact that the concepts around CrabbieMasters and “Beating The Crabbies!” coud receive such recognition so fast is a powerful boost to the hope this idea can truly benefit many others outside of the single classroom in which it all got started.

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) February 27, 2006 — Having just launched this creative parenting and childcare concept in January, Becky Undlin, twenty-five year in-home preschool owner notes, “We are ecstatic that the concepts of CrabbieMasters and “Beating The Crabbies!” (e.g. Achey, Get-Along, Too-Tired…) could receive such wonderful recognition so fast.” In terms of why CrabbieMasters won, Jodie Lynn, syndicated parenting expert and author, put it best:

“Everyone has enjoyed getting to know about CrabbieMasters and The Crabbies. This is a must do and go to educational website that will inspire parents and kids alike. CrabbieMasters and ‘The Crabbies’ provide preschool, childcare and homeschool teachers and parents with practical positive resources to help children learn values and manage behavior and emotions. The best part is that the kids love to blame their unacceptable behavior on a Crabbie…it’s a great idea by bringing a whole new concept to the forefront creating a positive outcome for good behavior!” ~ Jodie Lynn, syndicated parenting/health expert, Parent to Parent, CEO/founder of www.AddingWisdomAward.com, and author of family/health book, Mommy-CEO.

The Adding Wisdom Award committees are comprised of experts from across the United States: parents, teachers, librarians, pediatricians, psychologists, media critics, child care facility personnel and directors, and other professionals who are involved with children on a daily basis. These committees look for products that entertain and teach, inspiring imagination and creativity.

Additionally, the committees are interested in how products help children grow ethically, socially, intellectually, emotionally and physically. After the committees approve products, the items are then given to Family Testers ‘ real families ‘ for testing and evaluation before final decisions are reached.

Becky created ‘The Crabbies’ (well, ‘stumbled on’ might be more accurate) in the late 1980’s, and has used this and many related concepts (e.g. WiseOnes, U.L.T.I.M.A.T.E. Skills, Kids-In-Charge) in her own in-home preschool for almost twenty years. Teaching young children to become CrabbieMasters has become the single greatest key – the foundation really – to her success in working with children of preschool age and older. For years, she wanted to find a way to share everything she has learned to help adults help children (and themselves!) deal with the inevitable ups and downs of any given day. One of her earliest preschoolers, Paul Fischer, had been after her to build a website for a long time and now, with his creative energy, it’s done. Becky hopes it will be as valuable of a resource to other adults, caregivers, parents and teachers of young children as it has been to her.

Oh, it’s all free too – unless you want to make a donation or go to a very small store with a few items that might help you and the children you work with “Crack Down on The Crabbies!” – but truly, you can get everything you need to “BEAT The Crabbies!” just browsing through the website and downloading helpful printables without spending a penny. Becky simply thinks that that’s the way it should be.

Now everyone can beat “The Crabbiest Crabbie in the Whole Universe!” – and we know which one it is…

CM