Loop Scheduling for Homeschool and Less Stress

Do you often feel like there is too much to do? Your head is filled with all the little teeny details that need to be done and add up to a whole massive list? Just looking at the house and ALL THE STUFF and feel overwhelmed. In comes loop scheduling for homeschool!

Maybe you are wondering how in the heck you are supposed to fit all those subjects that the homeschool curriculum schedules seem to have all planned out? Fit it into your day and not turn into a large over muscled heavy breathing green hulk with anger problems? Feel like you are getting short of breath because you haven’t checked off all the boxes for the days schoolwork?

Let me tell you when it comes to a clean house and all the homeschool subjects daily– you don’t have to do all of it TODAY. Yep, that’s what I said. YOU DON”T HAVE TO. Why? Not even public schoolers do all subjects every day. Because there are only so many hours and only so much of you to go around. Very little time to have your children home before they grow up. Because real life happens and no one wants to live in an always ready-for-guests and untouchable bathroom towels sortof perfect.

So, how do you manage the day to day life of lists without wanting to crawl under the covers and not even start the day? Loop scheduling. There are a whole slew of tutorials and articles on this mysterious sanity saving tool. Take a look at how we use it.

What is Loop Scheduling?

Loop scheduling is simply putting a list on repeat. What?

Picture the conveyor belt at the grocery checkout that has the ad for fruit roll-ups printed on it. You just keep seeing it pop up every other customer in line if front of you. It spins around and people unload their grocery cart over it. Think about sticking on a pretty cri-cut vinyl list item onto that belt. Turn on the conveyor to the next pretty cutout when you’ve finished the one currently showing.

You never have to guess what to do next. Never have to get distracted and pulled away from something on the list. Just do what pops up on the pretty washi tape decorated conveyor belt with amazing bullet journal watercolor doodles added to the borders.

What Can I use the Loop scheduling for?

Anything you have to do repeatedly in life. As long as it is not day/time specific like going to the dentist or getting to work on time. House chores, garden to-do’s, homeschooling, repairs and maintenance, letter writing, networking, menu-planning, which parks for playdates, who gets the next turn to.__________.

Give me an example of Loop scheduling for the home.

• List the things you should be doing to keep your house maintained. Notice, I didn’t say perfect. Instead, a list of the things you need to do to maintain the level of “picked-up” that creates peace, hygge, relaxation for you.
• Take that list and start out by putting one item on that list on an index card.
• Continue putting one item on the list on it’s own index card.
• Punch a hole in the corner of each index card.
• Put a ring or piece of yarn through it. Hang it up in the laundry room, kitchen, wherever you will actually see it.
• Do that one item on the first index card. When done, flip it to the back of the pile.
• The next time you are going to do something for the maintaining of “picked-up-ness”, do what is showing on the top of the pile.
• You may choose to work through as many of the index card at any one time. Or as few of the cards.
• By looping the items, you guarantee that it won’t be five years before you remember to dust the cobwebs out of that one corner of the living room behind the tv.

What does Loop scheduling for homeschool look like?

Barring any state requirements, loop scheduling is an amazing life-changing discovery for our family. I am by nature always drawn to checkboxes and lists. The temptation is to put the pressure of ambitious lists of what to accomplish for the day onto the kids. To help myself not create anxiety in my own head and the kids, I learned to loop. The atmosphere immediately changed to a calm and enjoyable one.

Here is what our actual loop schedule looks like for this year. It started by being printed on beautiful cardstock looking like an Etsy watercolor but quickly it has de-volved to whatever sticky notes were handy scribbled onto a worn-out divider. This is the most useful way I use it, not kidding! So don’t add stress to yourself by thinking you have to create an amazing bullet journal.

Set Up

• Get your cup of tea, some sticky notes or index cards, and your favorite pen. Get your freebie worksheets linked below.
• List the subjects you need to do everyday in order to stay on top of the subject. Think the 3 non-traditional “R’s”: Reading, religion, arithmetic. List those on the worksheet.
• For those 3 everyday subjects, look harder at each of those 3 subjects. For example: think of the subject of writing. Is it all copy work or is some of this subject grammar, spelling, vocabulary, or learning to type? Pair up 1 or 2 of these sub categories on their own sticky note or index card. Continue with another pair on another post-it until all the sub sets are accounted for in writing/English. Stack these sticky notes in their own pile.
• Repeat for the other 2 everyday subjects. Now you have 3 piles of varying numbers of sticky notes. For us, math is just “math’ as one sticky note in that subject’s pile. My kids just pick up where they left off.

What about electives?

• Make a different pile of post-its with electives. Maybe you have a child who really wants to do science while your other child really is into art. A third child really loves being outside. Maybe you have one child but want to cover a variety of electives. Each elective gets it’s own sticky note but all in the same pile. Set this pile to the side. You being mom can only teach one thing at a time, so when that child’s elective is the next on the sticky note pile, they get the bit of attention on that elective. Rotate it to the back and the next child’s elective gets a bit of attention, etc.
• Put the sticky note loop piles in a column. For that day, try to do the top sticky note of each pile. As you do the item on a sticky note, move it to the back of that pile.

The Magic of the Loop

• Now for the stress reducing magic. If for some reason you can’t do all the top sticky notes in the column for the day, you just do whatever is on top of the missed sticky note pile first the next day or when you do “school” next. You don’t have to worry about missing one subject and it throwing off your whole schedule. AND, you don’t find that 4 weeks have passed since you’ve done any art.

Loop scheduling troubleshooting

• It would not be a good idea to have a list that is too long. Do you have a house cleaning list that is a hundred items long? It would take too long to get back around the loop to each item. It could take you 3 months to get back to “vacuum”. Create smaller mini-loops of subsets in that case like the example of have multiple mini-loops for homeschool.
• Remember to “eat the frog”. There will always be loop items or whole mini-loop piles that are not favorites and we are tempted to skip. Just eat the frog and do it first when you are doing the loop. Get it over with and be proud that it is accomplished and the sense of order and peace it creates.
• Don’t loop everything in your life. It just creates the same stress as not looping anything. Two ends of the same stick. Balance is what we are after.

Show me how to set up my own loops!

Don’t forget to sign up for our e-newsletter and get your free loop scheduling how-to worksheets! These worksheets describe how to break down everyday main subjects as well as side subjects into loops to get you started.

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