Our Toss Your Kruddy Approach: Clear & Classroom Ready

Help Every Child: Name It. Choose it. Toss It.™

— A Simple 3-Step SEL Plan for Self-Awareness & Self-Regulation

The program equips students with practical regulation tools before behaviours escalate.
This supports self-awareness, confidence, emotional well-being, and the ability to navigate challenges throughout life.

SECTION 1: THE PROBLEM EDUCATORS FACE

Teachers today are not just teaching academics.
They are supporting:

  • Emotional outbursts
  • Anxiety and shutdown behaviors
  • Peer conflict
  • Low frustration tolerance
  • Students who don’t yet know how to manage big feelings
You need something that works in real time — without adding another complicated curriculum.

🌟 Explore the Toss Your Kruddy™ Reset

A simple, story-based approach that helps children recognize their feelings, pause, and choose helpful responses.

🎓 For Educators—What now?

  • ⭐ Book a School Visit (primary)

    Then:

    • Explore Classroom Kit
    • View the Book

🔄 The 3-Step Emotional Reset

1️⃣ Name It

Students identify what they are feeling, building awareness of their emotions.

2️⃣ Choose It

Students recognize how their thoughts influence feelings and behavior.
Using the shared language of Shnoogy (helpful thoughts) and Kruddy (unhelpful thoughts)

creates a safe, non-judgmental way to explore emotions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3️⃣ Toss It™

Students learn practical strategies to let go of unhelpful thoughts and choose more helpful actions — supporting focus, regulation, and continued engagement in learning.

Ideal for K–5 SEL routines, calming breaks, and restorative conversations.

🌟 Why Educators and Parents Choose TYK

 

  • Developed from over 20 years of classroom storytelling, puppetry, and creative practice
  • Informed by mindfulness research and real-world classroom experience
  • Provides a shared emotional language (Shnoogy and Kruddy) that students can use daily
  • Flexible for both universal SEL (Tier 1) and targeted self-regulation support
  • Engages students through story, music (including the Shnoogy Rap), activities, posters, and daily routines

 

SHNOOGY AND KRUDDY:

🌟 Shnoogy and Kruddy

Everyone has them!

Shnoogy and Kruddy are fun, humorous characters that represent the different thoughts and feelings we all experience inside.

Shnoogy reflects our helpful thoughts, choices, and actions.
Kruddy reflects our unhelpful thoughts, reactions, and impulses.

Together, they help children understand something important:

Their feelings — even anger, sadness, or frustration — do not define who they are.

What matters is how they learn to respond.

By recognizing these inner voices, children begin to:

  • Pause
  • Reflect
  • Choose more helpful actions

This increases confidence and supports stronger emotional well-being.

Designed as a Tier 1 support within an MTSS framework.

Shnoogy and Kruddy offer children a gentle, non-judgmental language to express where they are mentally and emotionally with parents, teachers, and others.

🌿 Constance M. Douglas

(The Shnoogy Lady)

Toss Your Kruddy Reset Program:

Developed through 20+ years of classroom and pediatric experience and supported by ongoing independent research at the University of Lethbridge.

I am a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher (Brown University), author, illustrator, and children’s storyteller and puppeteer.

I am the creator of Toss Your Kruddy™ 1–2–3 Reset — a simple, classroom-ready approach that helps children understand their feelings and choose helpful responses.

I am currently completing a BASc at the University of Lethbridge, where I am conducting a three-year independent psychology study exploring the impact of social-emotional learning (SEL) on children’s confidence, communication, and empathy.

🌿 From Creative Practice to Research-Informed Application

My work began in 2006 with an installation at Phoenix Children's Hospital, where storytelling and visual art were used to help children understand their inner experiences.

This experience sparked a deeper question:

How does reciprocal storytelling influence empathy, emotional regulation, and a child’s sense of agency?

That question now guides my research.

My independent study is approved under Tri-Council ethical standards and is grounded in over 20 years of experience in pediatric settings and classrooms, both in Canada and internationally.

🌟 A Simple, Child-Friendly Approach

At the heart of my work is a simple, empowering process that helps children:

  • Name what they are feeling
  • Pause and become aware
  • Choose a helpful response over an unhelpful reaction

This gives children a practical way to navigate their emotions and move toward calmer, more positive outcomes.

💛 My Purpose

At the heart of everything I create is a single intention:

To help make life feel a little safer and more manageable for children.

Children begin to understand that while they cannot always control what they feel,
they can learn to choose how they respond.

 

🌿 Where Toss Your Kruddy™ Began

Toss Your Kruddy™ was born in 2006.

It began as an art installation in a pediatric hospital setting at Phoenix Children's Hospital — an eleven-canvas painted storyboard created to support children facing serious life challenges.

It was here that Shnoogy and Kruddy first came to life as companions, offering children a gentle but powerful realization:

Even in the hardest circumstances, children still have a kind of superpower.

While they may not be able to control what is happening around them,
they can begin to understand — and learn to guide — their inner world.

Families, staff, and young patients began asking for more.

What started within the hospital walls gradually grew beyond them.

Over time, the original painted storyboard evolved into a written story — shaped through years of creative refinement and inspired by the voices and experiences of thousands of children.

The rhyming language arrived insistently, often in quiet, unexpected moments, until each line found its place.

🌟 Today

Toss Your Kruddy™ carries forward the same message it held from the beginning:

You may not always control what happens to you —
but you can learn to guide how you respond.

🌿 A Season of Commitment

The original Shnoogy installation at Phoenix Children's Hospital was created during a deeply challenging season in my life.

Following a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, I experienced significant changes in my mobility, speech, and the use of my right hand — the hand I had always relied on to paint.

At the time, I did not know what my long-term abilities would be.
But I made a quiet commitment to complete the eleven-canvas storyboard for the children at the hospital.

When my right hand became unreliable, I began retraining my left hand so I could continue the work.

Over the months that followed, I returned regularly — listening to families, spending time with the children, and painting, one canvas at a time.

The project was unveiled six months later, accompanied by posters, coloring pages, and small celebrations shared with the children.

💛 What That Season Taught Me

That experience changed me.

It reminded me that purpose can steady us — even in uncertainty.
And that creating something for others, especially children facing difficult circumstances, can strengthen us in ways we do not expect.

Today, Toss Your Kruddy® carries forward that same spirit.

It is the culmination of many years of creative work and lived experience — guided by a simple hope:

To help make the world feel a little kinder, and to support children in feeling more capable, steady, and empowered within themselves.