What is loop scheduling?

Loop scheduling, defined

Loop scheduling is a rotation. Rather than assigning each subject to a weekday, you put the subjects in a list and decide how many of them fit in a school day. Each day the child does the next ones in line, and when the list ends it starts over. The Homeschool Year Planner calls that number Loop subjects per day, and it is set per child.

Fixed days vs loop

In the planner, every course has a Schedule of either Fixed days or Loop. Neither is better. They suit different kinds of subjects, and you can mix both: you are not choosing a style for the whole family, just a schedule for each course.

• Fixed days — the course meets on specific weekdays: math every school day, or science on Tuesday and Thursday. Lessons run one after another on those days. If a Tuesday falls in a break, that meeting is skipped and the sequence moves on to the next Thursday.
• Loop — the course sits in a rotation with other loop courses. It has no weekday. Its turn comes when the rotation reaches it.

Breaks, holidays and no-school days are skipped by both kinds.

Loop subjects per day

The one setting that shapes a loop is how many loop subjects the child does each school day. With 2 loop subjects per day, the child does the next two in the rotation, then the next two the following day. With L loop slots per day and K loop courses, each course gets about L ÷ K turns per school day while all K are in the rotation. That is how you tell whether a loop is too thin or too crowded: add courses and each one comes up less often; add slots and each comes up more.

A worked rotation

Say a child has Art, Music, Poetry, Geography and Nature Study on loop, at 2 loop subjects per day. The rotation runs like this:

1. School day 1: Art, Music
2. School day 2: Poetry, Geography
3. School day 3: Nature Study, Art
4. School day 4: Music, Poetry
5. School day 5: Geography, Nature Study
6. School day 6: Art, Music, and the loop starts over

The math: 2 slots a day ÷ 5 courses = 0.4 turns per course per school day, so each course comes up every 2.5 school days, which is 2 turns each over a five-day week (10 slots across 5 courses). Nobody had to decide that Poetry belongs on Thursday.

What happens on a sick day

A sick day does not mean Poetry was missed. If the child is sick the day after school day 1, the rotation simply waits: Poetry and Geography are still the next two in line, so they are what the child does when school resumes. The subject just comes around again, which is why loops are forgiving. A fixed-days course is tied to its weekdays instead: once the day is marked No school, its next lesson moves to the course's next meeting. If the sick day was a Tuesday, in a Tuesday-and-Thursday science course the Tuesday lesson lands on Thursday.

When a loop course finishes

When a loop course reaches its last lesson, it leaves the rotation. The others come around sooner. In the example above, if Art finishes, four courses share 2 slots a day, so each comes up about every 2 school days (2 ÷ 4 = 0.5 turns per course per day), roughly two and a half times in a five-day week instead of two.

Which subjects suit which

• Math, phonics, a language (sequential skill building) — Fixed days, because each lesson depends on the last.
• A weekly lab, class or co-op — Fixed days, because it meets on set days.
• Read-alouds and literature — Loop, because the order is flexible.
• Art, music, crafts, picture study — Loop: regular exposure, not a weekday.
• Nature study, geography, poetry — Loop: short and repeatable.
• A short unit with a hard end date — Fixed days, with a start date (the planner's "Begins on" field).

How the planner does it

In the Homeschool Year Planner, you pick Fixed days or Loop on each course row, set Loop subjects per day for each child, and the schedule is laid out against your real calendar with breaks, holidays and no-school days skipped. It covers up to 5 children and 40 courses, in Excel and Google Sheets, with printable weekly pages. It is a file your family keeps, not a subscription planner you rent month to month.

Pacing a fixed-days course first

If you only need to know whether one course on fixed school days will finish in time, the free Homeschool Curriculum Pacing Calculator takes a lesson count, start lesson, school-days-per-week pattern, start date and breaks, then shows the school days available, lessons per week needed and planned finish date, and whether that fits before a last day. It handles one child and one course on fixed days; it does not do loops. For the arithmetic by hand, with a worked example, see how many lessons a week you need to finish a curriculum.

Where to go next

Loop scheduling plans the year ahead. A record of what actually happened is a different job: see what a homeschool portfolio review is, and the Homeschool Portfolio, Attendance & Transcript Records Binder, which proves the year after the fact while the planner plans it ahead. Or browse every template for homeschool families.