Missy’s Daycare Friends

01/21/2026

Hello Friends!

I took a big step back from social media for the last few months to focus on my family and child care program. So there was a gap in posting our monthly updates. But here is a recap of all the things we did during October, November, and December

In October, we learned about pumpkins, fall, and of course Halloween 🎃
Our crew explored local parks, got to visit Molin Meadow and enjoyed all th amazing activites that Farmer Jess and Ev have planned.
My favorite thing we did was our 8th annual Halloween Parade to my AMAZING neighbors. They absolutely spoiled our daycare crew with delicious treats and we got to sing some songs we have been learning at daycare.
We welcomed a new fur baby, Whiskey, into our home and he has adjusted so well into the chaos of daycare. The kids love throwing toys for him and Willow. Also the children LOVE getting Whiskey and Willow to practice their tricks by offering them treats.
Our daycare family received heart breaking news about our beloved dog, Mazie, she was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma around her heart and spleen. She received so much love and comfort from all current and even past families that came to see her and offer extra love. She was laid to rest at the end of November. She is still missed by all our friends here at daycare.

In November we spent talking about our families and things that we are grateful for. We took on a an amazing opportunity and a small food drive within daycare and together we packaged over 20 “Meal in a Bag” to bring to Family Pathways Food Pantry
Our friends began making their very own “Flat Elf” to prepare to mail out just before the Holidays.

In December our daycare was visited by the amazing Santa all the way from the North Pole. Thankful we have a very talented daycare parent that comes and takes phenomenal pictures to document this wonderful trip. The kids loved when our daycare turned into a “mini Santa village” where all our toys and books were Christmas themed. We started our monthly membership at My Jungle Gym, which the kids LOVE. It’s the best place to burn out all our energy! We mailed out our “Flat Elves” to a family member to see how everyone celebrates the holidays differently. The kids enjoyed seeing all the updates that their elf went on!

10/15/2025

September was spent moving into our fall theme, welcoming back old friends and new friends. We watched our schoolagers go back to school and our “boys” start preschool.

Our friends enjoyed our apple theme lesson. It was jammed packed with fun art projects, field trip to the apple orchard, trying several different kinds of apples, learning different ways to use apples.

September was also the month where A L O T of our friends showed up to daycare wearing the same outfit….. more than once… I started to think my parents were plotting this as a joke because it was happening almost daily for the month 🤣

We participated in C-I School dress up days in preparation for homecoming football game. The kids had a blast!

Our friend, “Baby ABC” joined us until he could get into the same daycare as his older brother. It was a short time here but the kids LOVED him and still ask about it. Once “Baby ABC” was able to join his older brother, we welcomed a new friend to our crew. He is settling into our routine so well!

The daycare van got a massive upgrade to a beautiful new (to us) 15 passenger van. We got back into the swing of exploring the parks around the area. After we pick up our boys from preschool, we have been enjoying some extra playtime and picnics with the beautiful weather.

It is finally the time of the year where we broke out our rainsuit (aka: the minion suits/the biohazard suits/ the road clean up suits). We have been having a blast playing in the wet grass, mud, exploring the woods, and digging in the sandbox.

September went quick and we are now into our Spooky Halloween theme so stay tuned for all of October’s fun adventures

08/29/2025

🎶 August slipped away into a moment of time 🎶

I blinked and summer has come to an end. But August was so jammed packed with adventures and memories that I couldn’t be more happier that this is how we ended summer break at Missy’s.

We found over 27 monarch caterpillars. The kids got to watch the eggs hatch, turn into caterpillars, then into chrysalis, and a few started to hatch into a beautiful butterfly. On all of our adventures out of the house, the kids have fine tuned their “milkweed radar”. It amazes me how fast the kids can spot milkweed and are so excited and eager to check for more caterpillars. They also took on the responsibility of changing the milkweed out for the caterpillars and assisting me in cleaning the cage daily.

New (and old) places we visited included; Young Park in Princeton, Stanchfield Park, Legacy Park in Isanti, Rum River North County Park in St. Francis, Kid’s Kingdom in Mora, Wayside Prairie County Park in Isanti, and Riverside Park in Isanti.

While we had on some of the best hiking shoes, our friends loved getting to see new birds, findings different trees and comparing leaves and tree bark. We found lots of shapes in the woods, our favorite was the heart shape that was engraved in a tree.

One of our favorite things we did while exploring a county park was we brought along our poloraid camera and the kids got to capture their own vision of nature. It was so cool watching all the kid’s creativity side come out. They enjoyed sharing pictures and bring their own memories home to share with their family.

We received our new sensory table with some amazing activity cards and the kids got to pick out some of the activities to do. I love including them in helping plan our days.

We made the most DELICIOUS pasta dish with vegetables and herbs from our garden. The whole daycare helped pick vegetables, wash and dry the stuff, cut and assemble the food to be baked in the oven. They were begging to have this again days after we made it!

While we were visiting Young Park in Princeton, I forgot to grab sunscreen, but no fear… Papa Bob came to the recuse in minutes AND brought a “cool car” for the kids to check out. They loved sitting in “Ms. Pearl” and taking pictures for their parents… and of course they loved watching Papa Bob do a “burn out”.

One of the best take home activities we did was make flower arrangements for our parents with the most amazing and gorgeous flowers from Molin's Meadows Farm.

No summer is complete without Ice Cream so we were so happy to have Scoops Ice Cream & Candy stop by. This was a huge hit with our friends that live in the countryside and don’t get to have thise weekly ice cream truck visits. I was so proud that each of the kids ordered their own ice cream and had the best manners!

Summer is now over and several of our friends are heading back to school. But we are getting back some of our other friends who got to enjoy their summer at home with family. I am excited to ramp up our preschool curriculum and back into swing with the younger crew!!

08/02/2025

July was probably one of my favorite months so far! There was some amazing weather where we could be outside enjoying water play, cooler mornings for those park dates, and we explored a lot of new places!!! ☀️ 🇺🇸

The schoolagers loved working on different bead bracelets and making keychains. I was surprised with a beautiful new keychain from one of them. They told me our van keys needed a cool keychain. 🥹🥰

We visited Mark Park Splash Pad again, it was VERY warm and the kids loved cooling off with the big splash bucket. I loved that a few daycare moms could join us for this field trip. 💦

While we were spending time st “Missy’s Park” one day, we had a previous daycare kid and their mom see us and they stopped to say “Hi!”. This daycare kiddo was apart of our program almost 5 years ago and is headed into 8th grade. It definitely fills my heart that even after aging out of daycare our families stay in touch and stop to see us! This is my FAVORITE part of family child care 😍

We explored new parks from Zimmerman, White Bear Lake, Forest Lake, Cambridge, Isanti, and to North Branch! 🚐

Our garden has provided us with a lot of delicious veggies for our lunches and snacks. The kids devoured all 12 of our cauliflower plants in one single meal! Which makes me want to buy a huge plot of land and plant a massive garden next year (wishful thinking!) 🪏

Isanti Jubilee Days was kicked off strong with the amazing parade. We have several daycare friends in the parade. We loved cheering on Dakotah’s Pet Spa, DW, NE All Star Cheer, and Isanti Hockey Association. Our daycare sat together for the 6th year in a room. I love that these kids are making memories together at daycare and outside of daycare! 🐎

We visited Eagle’s Nest in New Brighten on a rainy day. It was so amazing that our 2 year old friends all the way to our 12 year old friend had a blast. It was such a fun field trip and kept everyone busy! This is definitely on our list of places to visit again. 🛝

We got everyone dressed in swimsuits and set up our bounce house, only for 10 minutes later a rain storm blew in. The radar said it would be over in 20 minutes so we got to play, dance, sing, and swim in the rain. The laughter and excitement the kids let out when I told them we can stay outside, made getting soam worth it. (I was the only one not in a swim suit this time!) ☔️

We took a little hike in Gram’s Park, enjoyed bird watching, playing on the nature park, and ended our trip at DQ for some delicious dilly bars 🍦

Our friends got to take a break from the hot weather and visited My Jungle Gym in Isanti. We met up with Arissa Kordell’s daycare and were able to have the whole place to ourselves. The owner, Scott, was amazing at coming up with the coolest things for every one of all ages to do. We can’t wait to go back. 🐒

My one place I wanted to take everyone to was Tamarack Nature Park. My family visited this place for our family photos last year. It was definitely a big hit! The kids loved building sand castles, building a dam, climbing rocks, and catching frogs 🐸

We visited a little beach off the river to cool ourselves off and build some of the best sand castles. 🏝️

I am so sad that summer only had one month left before school starts again. So I just know August is going to be packed with all the last bits of summer! I can’t wait to share the things we do in August with you!! car esy

07/27/2025

🌟 This is the last week to get your votes in for the “Reader’s Choice: 2025 Best Of…” 🌟

I have been so graciously nominated and would love if everyone took the time each day to cast your vote for Best Child Care Provider of Isanti County 🩵

Voting ends on 8/3 @ 5:00 pm!!! 🗳️

Check it out now!

07/21/2025

07/10/2025

I am absolutely honored to be nominated again this year for Best Childcare Provider ⭐️
I definitely love my job and cannot imagine doing anything else. We have the best time over here at Missy’s Daycare Friends and sure make lots of memories here.

It would definitely mean so much if you take the time to vote each day 💕

The voting phase will begin TODAY, July 9 and run through Sunday, August 3. You can vote once per day!!

Check it out now!

07/08/2025

June was a great kick off to summer

Our friends have been using our mud kitchen daily and now the schoolagers are back, the menus are becoming more elaborate! 🧑‍🍳

Our tradition of watching the schoolagers complete the Booster Run at IIS was one for the books. We cheered excitedly and everyone got to join the schoolagers for a lap before they headed off back to school! 🏫

Everyone’s favorite truck, Bumblebee, has made several trips to daycare and the kids love watching him do burn outs 🛞 🐝

We visited Wildlife Science Center. We loved running with the wolves, seeing owls, checking out the foxes, and watching the bears (and the little cubs too!). 🐺 🐻 🦉

We rented out the Splash Park in Princeton 💦 It was cooler in the morning but our friends were champs and had a blast!

This month we visited (my favorite park) Irving & John Anderson County Park. Our friends LOVED using the MerlinID app to identify the birds we were hearing. 🐦

And we spent the first day of “summer” break FREEZING at Missy’s Park 🛝

Everyone was so excited to go to the movies to see Elio together 🍿

I made the “mistake” of not having anything planned one day (thinking we could have a chill/relaxing day 🤣🤣🤣), and I was asked over six thousand times what we doing today which lead me to frantically trying to come up with an activity for the next day… which was deciding to make homemade ice cream. The kids had a blast and it was delicious!! 🍦

I can’t wait to see all the fun we have in July 🇺🇸

06/22/2025

May we celebrated our mom’s by making flower pots and planting flowers. The kids took a trip to Menards to pick out flowers.

We explored two parks this month and enjoyed watching planes flying overhead.

Our mud kitchen is open again and our friends are working hard everyday to make the most delicious new creations.

Tending to the garden has become part of our daily routine, right after breakfast we go outside water and check on our crops. And of course enjoy a freezie or popsicle.

Everyone has been enjoying the different color matching games we have set up.

And we have enjoyed going on several walks around town!

06/22/2025

Our daycare was so graciously picked for Minnesota Horticultural Society’s Garden-In-A-Box program for 2025.

The kids have been doing amazing at logging in their hours for 1000 hours Outside and I thought this would be a perfect project to take on.

We picked up our garden supplies and plants and instantly got to work setting everything up. We are learning the difference in vegetables, fruits, growing things from seeds and seedlings. They have become more aware of our weather (constantly checking out rain gauge), checking on the garden after high winds, thunderstorms, and if there are any critters in our garden. We have harvested some lettuce for salads and a few berries. And we are waiting patiently for our green garden to change into a garden of rainbows.

We have planted a large variety of things! Carrots, 3 varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of peppers, jalapenos, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, basil, rosemary, thyme, mint, strawberries, 2 varieties of cucumber, zucchinic, kabocha squash, white onions, potatoes, and green beans.

We have been reading lots of tips and tricks to help have the biggest success with our garden from deep watering, fertilizing, “tickling the tomatoe plant”, cutting off “sucker leaves”, and so much more!

05/27/2025

April was full of fun Easter projects and exploring the parks with the nicer weather.

Our friends have been working hard on different art projects. Their favorite one was painting their very own 3D printed Easter Egg that was gifted to us by a daycare family.

I realize the kids are loving color sorting games and work together really hard to sort items.

During the Week of The Young Child, our friends each brought something from home to make a tasty beef stew, which was perfect for a cool spring day. Our friends LOVED making this and devoured their stew.

It was big moment when we finally opened the sandbox. Everyone pitched in to help get the leaves and sticks out. And I was able to refill the sandbox with a few bags of sand.

We are moving into our summer themed lessons which involve gardening and bird watching.