All of my primary kids love using scarves! I created this simple pattern to use while singing through My Heavenly Father Loves Me – either verse works.
Pass out a silk scarf to every kid in Primary, or save money and buy scarves for only half of the kids. This gives you a sneaky reason to sing through the song practicing the pattern twice as many times!
**See TONS of fun ways to help you teach My Heavenly Father Loves Me Singing Time activities here!**

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Dance Scarves Movement Cards
Make easy and quick patterns for any Primary song with our printable Dance Scarves Movement Cards in our digital shop!
We also have a really helpful post to give you more ideas and ways to use dance scarves in Primary and other songs we’ve made lessons for using dance scarves are linked!
My Heavenly Father Loves Me
Scarves Pattern
Sing through My Heavenly Father Loves Me once, before introducing this activity. You can use your favorite from all of these awesome My Heavenly Father Loves Me flip chart!
Demonstrate the dance scarves pattern for the first half of the song (1x through each pattern), before passing out the manipulatives. Have the children following along with their arms, without the dance scarves, if they’d like to.
This scarves pattern uses one simple movement per line of the song, then move to the next pattern. You’ll make your way through the 4 patterns twice during the song, starting over at the top once you’re halfway through the song.

- Up & Down – “Whenever I hear the song of a bird”
- Left/Right – “Or look at the blue, blue sky”
- Circles – “Whenever I feel the rain on my face”
- Swishes along bottom – “Or the wind as it rushes by”
- Up & Down – “Whenever I touch a velvet rose”
- Left/Right – “Or walk by a lilac tree
- Circles – “I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world”
- Swishes along bottom – “Heavenly Father created for me”

Up & Down: The up and down pattern is just raising your arm up and back down while holding a corner of the scarf square.
Left & Right: Hold one corner of the dance scarf and move your arm back and forth horizontally in front of you.
Circles: For circles just draw a circle with your scarf out in front of you.
Swish Low: Swish across in front of you at about thigh level, like your drawing a snake slithering along the sand.
Use these sheer rainbow colored scarves for singing time! We love having lots of different colors scarves, especially when it comes time to sing When I Am Baptized!
For your Senior primary, give them the challenge of adding four of their own “patterns” for the last four lines (or the whole song with a x2 repeat).
My group’s favorite is always tossing the scarf up in the air and catching it again. If you do add more patterns, you can just quickly draw the symbols up on the white board so everyone can remember what to do.
For another fun way to play, try to sing at double speed along with your dance scarves pattern!
Or, grab our Dance Scarves Movement Cards for instant patterns that are a cinch!! The set includes a contact sheet with all of the 24 different ideas I came up with!
My Heavenly Father Loves Me Dance Scarves Video Demo
Check out this video demo to help you prepare for this dance scarves activity! In this video, I explain the 4 different dance scarves actions in this pattern and sing through the first verse using the dance scarves pattern! Just grab the link below and try the pattern with me!
–> My Heavenly Father Loves Me Dance Scarves Video Demo <–
My Heavenly Father Loves Me Dance Scarves Pattern Printable Lesson Plan
To make this lesson even easier to use, you can grab our printable lesson plan here. It includes a 1-page printable dance scarves pattern chart.

You’ll find the printable lesson plan and 4 pattern action cards that can be reused over and over again with other songs included in the INSTANT Primary Singing membership whenever My Heavenly Father Loves Me is the featured song of the month.
To access the free in-post printables for this post, you’ll just need to create a free account or login with the Grow.me tool. Then, confirm by email and refresh the page and ALL my free printables will automatically unlock in every post!
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Continue on to one more idea for teaching My Heavenly Father Loves Me this time a fun review game using playdoh!
What other fun ways could you expand this Dance Scarves pattern?
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