Alternative Vaccine Schedules

Hello all!   I've had so many people asking for alternative vaccination schedules, so I'm posting a couple of them.   These are both pretty "middle of the road" - not mainstream, but not drastically different, either.   

I would personally lean toward Dr. Cave's version (since that's what Tom's doc in Florida recommended), over Dr. Sears', but either one is more sensible than the AAP one.

Click here for Dr. Stephanie Cave's recommended schedule, and

Click here for Dr. Robert Sears' recommended schedule.

I know, I know... it's that crazy mom again - but there is plenty of real science questioning the safety of our vaccine schedule (despite what Amanda Peet says!) and really, except for the inconvenience, there's no harm.   They still get vaccinated by school age.

If your child is on an alternative vaccine schedule, or if you're not vaccinating until the child is older, you may need the exemption/waiver form for preschools, day cares or elementary schools.  Public schools are required to accept the waivers, and I've submitted these to three different private schools and no one's ever even mentioned it to me.

Here's the link: Vaccine Exemption Form .    See how easy that is?

Fruit of the Spirit Fun!

My boys love to listen to those "Hide 'Em In Your Heart" songs by Steve Green, and one of their favorites is the "Fruits of the Spirit" song.    It's become one of their great party tricks - naming all 9 fruits of the Spirit.    Impressive!   

But as I listened to them belt out the song, I realized they pretty much didn't have a clue what they were talking about.  

Hmm... sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

So I got to work.  I have this awesome software program we used with Tom called Boardmaker, which is an amazing picture symbol program used to teach language to children with autism.  We (thankfully) don't have to use it much any more, but I thought it would be a GREAT way to explain what the fruits of the Spirit actually mean!

We talked about how, when we have Jesus on our heart, we show the fruits of the Spirit in our words and actions.   

We bought a tree from the teacher supply store, taped it to their bedroom door, and each week we're putting a new apple on the tree and focusing on that fruit of the spirit in their behavior with each other.  It seems to be sinking in.   

I even considered doing some kind of token system whenever they showed that week's behavior, or even writing the "fruitful" acts on individual leaves and filling up the tree with them, but alas, I'm a half-done Polly!  

Anyway, I thought I'd share it with y'all in case you wanted to do it with your kiddos!

I saved the 3 pages as pdf files, which can be downloaded here: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/kellyvalenta/lst?.dir=/Shared

Print, cut them out, and get started!

Humility....

A really neat quote from a friend at CR:

Humility is not 

thinking less of ourselves, 

but 

thinking of ourselves less.