If I wanted a click bait-y title I would have called this “The One Simple Trick That Saved Our Homeschool Schedule”, or some such nonsense. Except it actually is that simple, and that big of a game changer. All you need is to look at what you are already doing a bit differently. Maybe loop scheduling will help you too.
So… What is this magical new scheduling tool? Do you need supplies? A degree? To magically wake up as a better, more disciplined version of you?
Have no fear, this isn’t one of those posts. The ones where if you just got up at 4 am or never sat down again, you could totally do it all. This method is actually so simple that I felt ridiculous for needing to be told it at all.
Let’s look at a traditional schedule I might have made before this. In my imaginary schedule, I have four days titled Monday to Thursday. This leaves my Friday open for a regularly scheduled activity with out local homeschool group.
Most weeks this works great! Everything goes smoothly and we get to everything on the schedule for each day.
Some weeks don’t look like that though. Let’s say that a lot of field trips start to pop up on Thursdays. They start too early to have finished our whole school day before we attend. They are really great field trips that I don’t want to miss out on, but as time goes on we are getting farther and farther behind on just Thursday’s subjects. Now we are closing in on the end of the year and have a daunting number of chapters left in our history book…
(Cough cough possibly a true story.)
One year, instead of just deciding that this was some sort of weird personal failing that I could prevent with some magical dose of extra self discipline, I tried this new concept that I had heard of called “loop scheduling”. When I started making that year’s schedule, the only thing I changed was the name of each day. Monday to Thursday became Day 1 to Day 4.
The big difference being, it didn’t matter what day of the week it was! If we finished our previous week on Day 3, then on Monday we started on Day 4. 1, 2, 3, 4, round and round. Every single subject got the same amount of hours put in.
How stupidly easy is that??? Honestly, I was almost mad that it worked. I had let myself get so caught up in doing things the was I was “supposed” to, that I was unable to look outside of the little box I had made.
This doesn’t have to be confined to your homeschool schedule either. A lot of people who struggle with a days of the week style cleaning schedule will be happier if they loop schedule it instead. Just write out the same tasks that you want done, and go through them one at a time until you reach the bottom of your list. Then start again. Maybe today you do one task and five on the weekend. Who cares! It is all getting done and you always know what to do next.
What do you think? Was this one obvious for you? Are you entirely baffled as to why I had never thought of it?
I don’t know what it is, but it is just so easy to get stuck doing things the way you have always done them. Maybe this little tip will help un-stick you too.
Want to give it a try? I have made you some free printable loop scheduling pages! There are both 4 day and 5 day versions. Let me know what you think!
Free Loop Scheduling Pages
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