If you’re looking for ways to keep your kids active and entertained this Father’s Day weekend, look no further than the Live Oak Music Festival’s Children’s Area, which is filled with activities for the whole family at El Chorro Regional Park.
Join the fun
The Live Oak Music Festival runs Friday, June 19, to Sunday, June 21, at El Chorro Reginal Park, across from Cuesta College. You can buy full festival tickets or day passes at liveoakfest.org. Add-ons include the Acorn Craft Pass.
Want to handle some reptiles? Make a tie-dyed T-shirt? Build a robot? Learn outdoor skills and explore nature? Join the talent show?
There’s all that and more.
The Children’s Area is organized and managed by volunteer Dave Wilson, a longtime outdoor and natural science educator who for years ran Coyote Road School.
“I was a naturalist and ran a science camp,” Wilson explained. “I did outdoor recreation, like backpacking and climbing and stuff like that for many years. When I was running my natural science camp, I offered up something to do at Live Oak, I think back in ’03, and I had a little booth in which I taught some nature skills.”
Wilson began running the kids’ activities after the former coordinator, Anam Cré Pottery Studio owner Shevon Sullivan, decided she wanted to pass the baton to someone new, so he became the next Children’s Area volunteer coordinator. He landed in the job essentially untrained.
“We would have done [a Live Oak] together in 2020, but COVID hit,” Wilson chuckled. “So, I wasn’t able to work with Shevon one-on-one to learn directly from her, and so what ended up happening is that when Live Oak opened back up, I was kind of doing it on my own. And so that pressure was a little rough, but we settled into something really good right now.”
Wilson kept many of the activities that were available in the kids’ zone for years and added more.
“We’ve kept a lot of the same things. We have a little Acorns Toddler Oasis Zone, we have the children’s stage, which has family- and children-appropriate performers and so forth.”
Don Norton, the longtime Children’s Talent Show emcee, will host a Music and Movement Family Concert on Saturday, June 20, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Miss Leo & Captain Kirk (aka Kirk Nordby) will have a Children’s Music Hour on Sunday, June 21, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Renowned storyteller Michael Katz will be on the children’s stage Saturday and Sunday too.
“One of the things that I was able to bring in was some more natural science stuff,” Wilson explained. “So, we have the Learning Among the Oaks (LATO) group that’s based out of Santa Margarita. People also bring in Cal Poly’s physiological ecology and reptile lab, which they call the Pearl Lab. We have the LATO people leading hikes, teaching about birding, and having [taxidermy] animals on display. The reptile folks bring live animals for the kids.”
It wouldn’t be a children’s area without plenty of crafts—some of which cost between $10 to $25 for materials—such as painting crafts, robot building, henna, nail string art, making your own hula hoop, fabric stamping, and tie dye.
“Crafts is one of the biggest things,” Wilson noted. “Of course, tie dye is the most popular thing that people love to do in the Children’s Area, and that’s never ever going to change.”
But Wilson also noted that there are plenty of free crafts too, including making a fairy wand, Father’s Day cards (Saturday and Sunday only), God’s Eye yarn art, lanyard keychains, friendship bracelets, and signs for your camp.
‘It’s just so much fun being at Live Oak and in the kids’ zone. It’s so family friendly. People are just so friendly. They bring their kids here year after year, and it’s just so much fun and so safe.’
—Dave Wilson, Children’s Area volunteer coordinator
“We have a game zone as well, and sometimes the games change a little bit just because they break and don’t get replaced,” Wilson explained. “We have duck races—two opposing water troughs, like agricultural water troughs, and then we have three pumps on either side, and kids of any age can put ducks into these little troughs and race each other. It’s pretty cool.”
In the past, the kids’ zone even had a woodworking area, but it was discontinued because it was too manpower intensive to supervise kids with power tools.
“We used to have a source for wood,” Wilson said, “but we don’t have that source of wood anymore.”
Even without the woodworking, Wilson manages about 30 volunteers in the Children’s Area.
“You might ask, ‘Well, how many people do you have returning?’ And I have about, I would say half of my volunteers returning this year from last. So, that makes it consistent and they really love being in the kids’ area. I offer them one meal a day for their time, and they have a flexible schedule. I’m definitely not one of those slave drivers,” Wilson laughed. “I think it makes it nice for them to give back to Live Oak and do something fun.”
Credit: PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LIVE OAK MUSIC FESTIVAL
There’s also kids and family yoga. And this will be the last year for Talent Show emcee Norton to volunteer. He’s passing the torch to Patrick Pearson, a professional musician and music teacher who’s a member of Resination and Cuesta Ridge. He’ll take over the kids’ talent show next year.
“It’s just so much fun being at Live Oak and in the kids’ zone,” Wilson said. “It’s so family friendly. People are just so friendly. They bring their kids here year after year, and it’s just so much fun and so safe.”
Oh, and if you like live music, Live Oak has plenty of that too. ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Winning Images 2026.
