Faith Kelley works on her math assignment at the kitchen counter. Faith is home-schooled by her mother, Mary Ann Kelley. When Mary Ann Kelley began looking for home-schooling resources for people like herself, she couldn't find many, and what she could find was not in a central location. So she started her own Web site. smc

Mary Ann Kelley home-schools her daughters, Faith, 6, and Michaela, 9, at their Stafford home. She started a Web site and monthly newsletter for home-schooling resources, and families around the country turn to her for information. smc

Mary Ann Kelley helps her daughter Faith with her math work. Kelley started a Web site with home-schooling resources. smc

Stafford County woman is 'TheHomeSchoolMom' in the virtual world of cyberspace

By CATHY DYSON

Date published: 3/8/2005

HEN MARY ANN Kelley started home schooling five years ago, she didn't know what resources were out there.

She joined an online group and asked around. Other home-school mothers shared some great tips about types of curriculum and where to find free samples of educational products.

But Kelley never found a single Web site that contained all the information she had gathered in a few e-mails.

So, the Stafford County woman started one--and became "TheHomeSchoolMom" in the virtual world of cyberspace.

Kelley, 38, started a Web site by the same name and created a monthly newsletter. At first, most of the subscribers were family members or fellow home-schoolers in the Fredericksburg area.

These days, her newsletter is viewed by more than 9,000 people worldwide. Most are in North America, but a few are military families stationed overseas.

She doesn't charge for her service, but she does sell ads in the newsletter--as long as the products are educational.

"TheHomeSchoolMom" is no longer the only home-schooling resource on the Web. A Google search produces more than a million links with some sort of reference to those who teach their children at home.

But it does stand out, for both its content and design, said Ron Thompson, a regular advertiser.

His Florida company publishes a magazine called "Learning Through History." For two years, he's advertised regularly in Kelley's newsletter and has gotten good results. He's tried--and dropped--a lot of similar Web sites in that same time.

"Mary Ann's is consistently the most successful one for us," said Thompson of Classic Education Inc. in Naples. "She just does a real professional job of putting it together, and she understands what a home-schooling mom needs."

Kelley doesn't consider herself an authority on home schooling. Far from it.

But she does know a thing or two about finding resources online. She's used a lot of them to develop a curriculum for her own children: Michaela, 9, and Faith, who turns 7 tomorrow.

Kelley prefers to give them the basics, then let the girls explore topics that interest them. That style is known as child-led learning.

Michaela is a voracious reader. In one day, she read almost every word of "The Vile Village," the seventh book in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events collection. That book is geared to fifth- or sixth-graders, and she's a fourth-grader.

Faith is following a curriculum called "Five in a Row" in language arts. She and her mother read books that have won Caldecott Medals--for the most distinguished American picture book for children--then review certain aspects of the stories.

For instance, the two recently read "The Glorious Flight," about Louis Bleriot and the plane he built and flew over the English Channel. After Kelley read the story, she asked Faith various questions.

Date published: 3/8/2005