it's not just learning, it's enlightening http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Fri, 1 Aug 2008 15:38:00 -0500 Fri, 1 Aug 2008 15:38:00 -0500 http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/dc/200807230.asp State Board of Education Approves New Restrictive Homeschool Regulations For the first time in over 15 years, a United States jurisdiction has enacted laws that significantly increase restrictions on homeschooling freedom! This past Wednesday, the D.C. State Board of Education (SBOE) approved the State Superintendent of Education’s June 27 draft of the home education regulations. After some discussion, the SBOE voted 5 to 1 in favor of the superintendent’s regulations. Only Board Member William Lockridge voted “no.” When giving his reasons, he exposed the unbridled discretion the Superintendent would now have over homeschoolers. Lockridge likened the new power of the Superintendent over parents as a type of “socialism.” These regulations were objected to by many—the Board recorded receiving over 2,800 emails, 400 phone calls, and written comments in opposition. This was the third public session held to discuss these regulations. In the first session, over 120 homeschoolers attended and over 30 testified including lengthy presentations by Chris Klicka, Mike Donnelly, and Scott Woodruff of HSLDA. That resulted in the removal of the worst requirement: home visits by D.C. school officials. However, in spite of testimony presented by Ethan Reedy, President of D.C. Home Educators Association, and Chris Klicka of HSLDA, the Board passed the new restrictive regulations. It was clear the Board already had its mind made up. (Klicka’s written testimony can be reviewed online here). HSLDA had even delivered a letter signed by 10 congressmen on the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform encouraging them to “work with HSLDA to ensure that the proposed changes in the city’s rules … will not have an adverse impact on homeschooling families in the District.” All to no avail. Among other things, the new regulations require annual notification of a parent’s intent to homeschool on a future form developed by OSSE (Office of the State Superintendent of Education), maintenance of a portfolio of schoolwork, and up to two annual portfolio reviews by the OSSE to determine whether a homeschool program, in OSSE’s opinion, is providing “regular, thorough instruction” in the required subjects. No guidelines are provided by the Board giving the OSSE arbitrary discretion to implement these provisions. To read the new regulations, click here. HSLDA is working on an analysis to guide our D.C. members in their response to this development. Please stay tuned for further information as OSSE’s deadline for notification (August 15) approaches. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/568704/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 15:38:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/568704/ Today I thought I would be writing up M's annual assessment.  As usual I can't think of much to write, I should have been good and written as it happened during the year.  I am ordering the Living is Learning guides, I can't believe I forgot about them!  Those will be a huge help in keeping up with an annual assesment. Lyl is still doing well with learning how to read.  Today she is carrying her The Fox on the Box book.  The School Zone "Start to Read" series and the Starfall lot are so awesome.  Next she says she wants to learn math. Sarah has even asked to learn how to read and M is teaching her :) http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/564189/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:00:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/564189/ yesterday lyl wanted to play blues clues at home.  she coloured her handprints and asked me to hide them.  i hid one on a blanket, one on a pillow and one on a bed.  she quickly got that i was referring to taking a nap. we will probably play some more today! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/560457/ Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:52:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/560457/ The past couple of days Lyl has been learning about money, she created her own lemonade stand and charges 25cents a cup.  It's really too cute to observe her. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/556089/ Thu, 3 Jul 2008 14:48:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/556089/ IMPORTANT HEALTH FREEDOM INFORMATION PLEASE FORWARD VERY WIDELY TO SUBSCRIBE TO HEALTH FREEDOM eALERTS, CLICK HERE (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=187) Special "Mouse Warrior" Action Alert: Voting to Turn the Police Power of the State into the Power of the Police State With a Needle - Legislature to vote June 10th COMPULSORY VACCINATION IS COMING TO NEW YORK STATE KIDS UNLESS YOU ACT NOW!   WE HAVE 5 DAYS Under proposed Assembly Bill 10942, NY surrenders its control of public health and makes every vaccination recomended by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices mandatory.  For the first time, vaccination of infants and toddlers becomes mandatory.  Under this proposed law, there will be NO exemptions for any reason. Why is New York giving away its rights to determine public health standards? Ralph Fucetola JD says in his blog (http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/06/ny-mandates-pharma-forced-vaccine.html), "We have to think about the cowardice and stupidity of our elected representatives and ask why they are willing to surrender state sovereignty to the dominion of Big Pharma's lies, while surrendering our well-being. They are turning the Police Power of the State into the Police State of Power!" Take these 5 Action Steps Now and Alert Your Contacts to Do the Same First NJ, Now NY: Is Your State Next? YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE IN NEW YORK STATE TO TELL NY LEGISLATORS THAT COMPULSORY IS VACCINATION A REALLY BAD IDEA! Click here to tell NY State Legislators and your Congressional Members to protect your health and your rights! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=21833 Click here to sign the Tiburon Declaration against forced drugging and vaccination http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?p=460 Click here to make your tax deductible recurring donation to sustain Natural Solutions Foundation, your Health Freedom's best friend http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189   Click here to order the brand new, long awaited Natural Solutions Foundation downloadable eBook on What You Need to Know About Vaccine Exemptions   https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1130/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=525   This outstanding 122 page compendium of information is available as a special introductory offer for $24.95 until the end of June.  After that, the price will be $39.95.  Act now.  Give every parent you know a copy of this unique book, written by leading vaccination attorney Alan G. Phillips, Esq.   Click here to join the vibrant No-Forced-Vaccination Yahoo! group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination/join New York State: the New "Needle Park" On June 10, 2008, unless we get enough voices to holler out loud, the New York Legislature pass "Fast Track" legislation making all shots recommended by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) mandatory for EVERY child in New York.  No exemptions of conscience or religion No objections by parents of already vaccine-damaged (or other vulnerable) kids. No private school exemptions.  None. Gone. Vaporized by vote.  Is that OK with you?  It's certainly NOT OK with me. Forget Parental Rights Forget Civil Rights Forget Exemptions.  Instead, every shot reccommended by ACIP, no matter how absurd or dangerous, will be mandatory. (The dangerous and unproven HPV vaccine will be mandated for your daughter) Every one.    Under the current ACIP vaccination schedule, children between the ages of birth and 7 years receive 47 doses of vaccines! No science shows this is either safe or effective.   By age 18 the total is 67 vaccine doses for boys and 70 for girls (including the absurd and dangerous HPV vaccines). No science shows this is either safe or effective.  Quite a lot of science shows that it is neither.   New vaccines are being added at a furious clip: there is no profit in vaccines unless they are widely administered.  How much more widely can they be administered?  Well, how about compulsory vaccination for you, too?  Under the same agency's recommended schedule, if you manage to survive to age 70 and you have been unlucky enough to be "fully vaccinated", you have received a walloping 70 vaccine doses since age 18 for a life-long total of 160 doses (men), 163 for women. And that doesn't even begin to deal with "special" vaccines like smallpox, "Avian Flu" or other "Pandemic" vaccinations. Nor does it include travel vaccines like Yellow Fever (which General Stubblebine and I routinely refuse, by the way).   Your response is probably, "What are they trying to do?  Kill us?"  Well, that's probably not a bad guess.   President Bush has proposed military quarantines of whole sections of the population re: Avian flu or other pandemic.  Oct. 2007 executive order from President Bush that directed HHS to establish a task force to plan for potential catastrophes like a terrorist attack, pandemic influenza or a natural disaster that would ensure full use of Department of Defense resources.   Once a "pandemic" is declared and martial law follows (triggered at the drop of that deadly word by the head of Health and Human Services or the White House), refusal to accept "Pandemic vaccination" will lead to your "relocation/quarantine" by either US forces or the Canadian army (following the February 14, 2008 treaty announced by US Army North Com and the Canadian Military).    The 2006 Defense Authorization Act expanded the 1807 Insurrection Act to allow the President to declare Martial Law and send in the Military not only for insurrections, but also any "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition," with both "incident" or "condition" not defined nor limited.   Halliburton has built a constellation of concentration camps (sort of our very own Gulag Archipelago) across the U.S. - are these camps for infected patients, or civil libertarians and nonviolent dissidents?   Flu Shots and Alzheimer's Disease   I do not believe there is such a thing as a "Green Vaccine", despite its lovely ring.  Even green vaccines are dangerous because they introduce antigenic materials into the body which are neither safe nor effective in preventing disease and which damage the immune system.  But if you still believe vaccines are safe, effective or both,  and you want to give your child a toxic brew, please, be my guest.  Why doesn't that right extend on the other direction?    Yesterday celebrities, parents, doctors and others marched to "Green Vaccines" in Washington and "get unnecessary toxins out of vaccines".  Does that mean that there are, in fact, "necessary" toxins in vaccines?   It supposes that safe vaccines without, for example, mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum hydroxide, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, cancer-causing viruses, human fetal tissues, stealth viruses and the rest of the witches' brew can, in fact, be made.  Let's assume that they can, just for the sake of argument.   There is nothing, nothing, I repeat nothing, in the non-commercial scientific literature which confirms the hypothesis that vaccines are related to the decrease in epidemic diseases (hygiene did that) or an increase in public health.  There is nothing which confirms the safety of early and multiple vaccine doses.  Nothing, although there is, of course, a vast amount of propaganda and junk science to assert it, but nothing to prove it.   My mother recently died of Alzheimer's Disease.  She took her flu shots regularly because her doctor urged her to.  Is my mother dead, after years of sorrow for herself and her family, because of her obedience to her mis-informed doctor?   Consider this: "According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals):   If an individual has had 5 consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is 10 times higher than if he/she had one, 2 or no shots. Dr. Fudenberg said it was so and that it was due to mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot. The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury. One microgram is considered toxic." http://www.royalrife.com/flu_shots.html Five consecutive flu shots?  Children by age 4.5 have had 5 consecutive flu shots.    Will the 50% Alzheimer's incidence in people over 80 increase to 100%?  What about for people age 70 who will have had 71 consecutive flu shots?   And what about the 1 to 3 micrograms of mercury that the CDC now admits remains in all vaccines as an undisclosed "trace" contaminant? See the AgeofAutism.com web site for the email exchange with CDC on this.   The Federal Government holds that vaccine issues belong to the states and their position is "merely advisory."  New York is surrendering its responsibility to the 15 member board of the ACIP.  Why?  Could it be that our strong advocacy and others letting people know about the dangers of vaccination threatens to undermine the tremendous profits inherent in vaccination?  Could it be that although, to quote the May 21, 2008 NY Times article, : "the U.S. currently enjoys the highest immunization rate ever; 77% of children embarking on the first day of school are completely up to date on their recommended doses and most of the remaining children are missing just a few shots."  We also enjoy the world's highest rates of autism (currently 1 boy in 60 in New Jersey!), pediatric diabetes, neurological disorders, MS, Asthma, Pediatric cancer, etc.   "Under the New York law, both your child's doctor and you will be required to maintain and provide burdensome documentation of the inoculated status of your child.  If you lose your child's papers?  Reinnoculation.    If you doubt that, ask the parents of the 1100 kids revaccinated at gun point in Prince George's County MD last November when the school district admitted that they had lost the kid's records and re-immunized them anyway!  And ask the parents of the other 1200 kids vaccinated that day while police with attack dogs watched - despite the fact that MD is an exemption state.   If you refuse vaccines in NY and don't give your child the opportunity to develop autism, asthma, diabetes, neurological disorders, and all the other possible consequences of immunization, including convulsions and death, you will very likely lose your child and go to jail.    Since there is no reason at all to believe that this lucrative, and insane, mandatory vaccination requirement will stop at age 18, I believe that we can expect laws mandating adult vaccination as well.     Even if you are still among those who believe that vaccination has a place in health, and I must admit, I no longer am, there is no place for unconstitutional and deadly mandatory requirements in health.  Click here https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1130/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=525 to read the articulate and eloquent rebuttal of the 9 absurd and unscientific points in the NYTimes article. This is a battle we must win in a war we must not lose. It's up to you.  If this is important enough to you, you WILL take action, donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation, purchase the Vaccine Exemption eBook and alert your contacts.  MOUSE WARRIORS: IT'S TIME TO ACT! Yours in health and freedom,  Dr. Rima  Rima E. Laibow, MD Medical Director  Natural Solutions Foundation  www.HealthFreedomUSA.org  SHARE! Tell Your Friends About HealthFreedomUSA.org   ORGANIZE! Join us in the fight to protect health freedom   SIGN CITIZEN'S PETITION Ask the U.S. government to change its policy on Codex Alimentarius   CONTRIBUTE! Make a contribution and help raise funds for the health freedom fight   VOTE! Register to vote in the US http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/543311/ Thu, 5 Jun 2008 08:53:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/543311/ lylly asked if she could stay up again last night, but when we were all going to bed she decided she didn't want to stay up.  she told us this morning "it's easy for bats to be nocturnal because they have their brothers and sisters and parents staying up with them but nocturnal humans are usually up by themselves". i told her that i was sure, when andy finally quits his 9-5 then we would change over to being up later. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/541240/ Sun, 1 Jun 2008 10:12:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/541240/ so it went well, she really is nocturnal - she stayed up until 4am!  i do my best in the evenings so i really wish we could change our schedules but that wont happen until andy stops working the 9-5 job. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/540526/ Fri, 30 May 2008 12:26:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/540526/ lylly came up to me and said "mama, i need to stay up all night tonight because i am nocturnal."  so of course i told her that if she took a nap she could stay up.  she took a nap and is so excited about getting to stay up.  i had forgotten how much i loved staying up late when i was a kid but the amount of wonder in her voice when i said she could brought it all back.  now here i am at 930 getting ready for a late night and trying to figure out what i am going to do all evening lol.  i wonder how long she will last... http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/539525/ Wed, 28 May 2008 20:36:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/539525/ we bought lyl a small dry erase board (shades of the old chalkboard slates) and she carries it around with her asking how to spell different things.  it works wonders for her learning how to read. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/536317/ Thu, 22 May 2008 11:24:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/536317/ how about both :)  my oldest is gone this week (on a girl scout trip to savannah) so she left the car of her winter white hamster to lylly.  lylly has been carrying snowball around since we got back from drop mare off.  if shes not holding the darn thing she is staring intently into the cage, watching his every move.  now lets not forget that lyl and sarah have their own hamsters.  but they are robo hamsters and dont like to be held.  i keep telling myself that i shouldnt get angry and i should be happy that i have a child that loves animals http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/535079/ Tue, 20 May 2008 10:41:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/madhousemauly/535079/