Loop scheduling your homeschooling merely means switching out different subjects you will teach from day to day, week to week or even month to month.
it is completely customisable to your lifestyle and homeschool strategy.
the best way to loop schedule for you is to know why you are loop scheduling in the first place.
What is a loop schedule?
a loop schedule is a way of not repeating the same things every day.
so you may do science and history one day and then math and geography the next.
you can loop either day to day, or week to week or create larger loops still and do it month to month or even term to term.
the way you loop schedule your schooling is determined by YOUR NEEDS.
As a homeschooler, what are you struggling with?
time?
effort?
interest?
consistency?
these things are all struggles in homeschooling life.
loop scheduling can be a way to create a homeschool lifestyle that fits your needs.
loop scheduling can create
- shorter work times.
- a more effective homeschool approach by looping your subjects to aid comprehension
- the ability for you to teach more than 1 child with less friction in your day
- the ability to create a more enjoyable homeschool approach by looping fun subjects with less fun,
- the ability to work through more subjects each week or month without fatiguing your students.
Why choose to loop schedule?
looping your homeschooling is usually used to lessen the daily workload and time you spend homeschooling.
for example.
the “by subject” loop
this year is my eldest first year of school, (year 5) where he is going to phase out of minimalist homeschooling and begin the phasing stage into high school.
to do this I have decided to loop schedule.
I will introduce one new subject at a time, and we will loop it with his current subjects.
this way, as we phase into a new year of homeschooling, he can gradually increase the time spent at the school table and grow his confidence and his ability to concentrate for longer periods.
I have chosen to loop the schedule in different ways.
subject-based
day based.
time-based.
subject-based, meaning, other than his (my eldest)core learning subjects (math, reading, writing, spelling) he will choose one extra, which is human anatomy (science/biology) this loop.
how long it will take him to finish I am unsure. but it doesn’t matter to me, we hope to finish it in 6-8 months, which means he can start another book, most likely a world history or geography subject.
this isn’t a loop I will always continue with, and perhaps in a few months, we may decide to change this loop and create two loops week to week of two different subjects.
the “why” behind this loop style, which is expansive is to help him be able to spend time on one subject and take the time he needs to master it.
the daily loop
looping your subjects by day is a way of staying on top of how much time you are spending homeschooling.
while we may desire to spend hours teaching our children, when you have little ones, it just isn’t possible.
Setting yourself a time limit on the time YOU will spend homeschooling, can determine which subjects you do each day.
some days you may have more time than others, and so you may choose to do all your subject twice per week, and then only the core subjects+one, on other days, interchanging the extra subject on the other days.
your schedule could look like.
- Mondays and Wednesdays- two to three hours of homeschooling, with all subjects+read aloud.
- Wednesday- an hour spent doing the core subjects+afternoon read aloud.
- Thursdays and Fridays–an hour spent doing the core subjects + one extracurricular for 30 minutes. switching between two on different days.
Or your schedule can look like this.
math, language arts and spelling daily.
art, science, history and writing are looped.
no set schedule, just do the ones you want to do daily and loop in, one at a time, the extra subjects, moving through the list over and over.
the time loop
Time looping is about you.
If you have multiple children you need to teach daily, trying to give all of them your proper attention without it eating a huge chunk of your day is almost impossible, especially when in the early stages of homeschooling.
the time loop allows you to loop your time, day to day, and child to child.
for example.
on Mondays. I focus on teaching two of my four children at the school table.
I teach the eldest and youngest. I can do this by having the oldest do the work that he can do on his own first.
Meanwhile, I spend time with the youngest. The other children at the school table, will either spend the day only doing work they can achieve on their own or if they need only a little help, I am ready to help.
If the child needs a lot of help, like figuring out a new math problem and it is not their day for one on one time, we postpone that lesson until the following day.
this works because, in any other area of life, as a mum, it’s hard to truly focus on so many things at once and be able to give it the attention it needs.
homeschooling is no different, I find it too stressful to be available to give my 100% effort to all four kids every day.
In this way, only having two children to give my full attention to, I am able to help them without becoming overwhelmed, it creates a calmer and easier school environment instead of everyone vying for my attention.
so my days now look like this.
mondays we do mummy hour bible reading, and a shared lesson with all the children.
the second hour we spend doing core subjects, and I spend my time with the two youngest children.
on Tuesday, there is no shared lesson and the two youngest take a day off from work they need help with, they can draw and paint and listen to me as I read and teach.
this gives me time to teach the older boys, who usually have more complex problems to solve.
Wednesdays we do another hour of bible reading and a shared lesson, spending another hour with the core subjects for everyone, again I teach the younger two.
thursdays. the two littles take the day off. and I teach the older two.
friday is a day we take off, as I still practice a four-day school week. although my two eldest will do any work missed during the week.
when you don’t need a loop schedule
if you are just starting out homeschooling, and you have young kids, then you probably don’t need to loop your subjects.
I am a huge believer in just doing minimal work in the early days, and so I think that showing up daily with a small amount of work you can do consistently is more effective than a larger workload you need to loop.
So, looping isn’t necessary when you don’t have many subjects.
It also isn’t necessary if you have the time each day to do a little of each subject.
or daily looping, which is the usual style of looping your homeschooling isn’t scary if you create large loops of weeks or months in order to stick to one or two subjects like I am doing this year for my eldest who I am phasing out of minimalist homeschooling.
If you are interested in learning how I homeschool about an hour a day from the ages of 5 to 10 then read these posts.
how to become a minimalist homeschooler
how much time should you spend homeschooling each day?
how to homeschool with little kids
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