Welcome to ockiDo!
Discover family fun in Orange County California! Looking for new places to take the kids? Planning a kid's birthday party? Want some insight on summer camps for your seven year old or ballet classes for your three year old? This is the place to come. Over time we hope to make this the destination to parents go to find out what to do in OC. Come back often and don't forget to tell us about OC Kid activites that we haven't discovered yet!
Ice Skating Birthday Party
17Mar08 | 0 comments
The Aliso Viejo Ice Palace in Orange County offers public skating and ice skating birthday parties. We went to one for six year olds. They have a seperate room where you can have your own private party. The current price of $175 for 10 kids and 2 adults for 1 hour is about average.
Here is the current package:
Birthday Party Package Price $175
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Lifetime Performing Arts Academy closes
15Mar08 | 0 comments
Sadly and suddenly, Lifetime Performing Arts Academy of Aliso Viejo closed their doors last month. Apparently due to an inability to come to terms on a new leasing contract. This leaves a big hole in South OC for the main reason that it offered kids a 'fun' place to build various performing skills. They offered dance, and theater dance and acting and voice and all kinds
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Hanna Montana 3D Movie Concert Delights Little Girls
3Feb08 | 1 comments
A great way for small kids, especially little girls to see a concert! I know when my daughter was two, she did not like the 3D movie at Disney California Adventure. But as a six year old, she thought it was "really cool". She kept trying to reach out and touch the things that were floating at her.
Be forewarned, even though the tickets were
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Birthday Party Ocean Institute
21Oct07 | 0 comments
A fun place to have a birthday party in Orange County if your kids are into ocean creatures or Science, is the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. It is primarily an educational institution but does have public access on weekends. It is perfect for the 6-12 year old group and even small kids love it.
Birthday parties are available on most weekends and the price is $225
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Birthday Party Ocean InstituteOrange County Children's Musical Theater Class
19Oct07 | 2 comments
Wow! I can't say enough about the itty bitty broadway program at the Center Stage Studio in Aliso Viejo. If you have five year old or six year old extroverts who like to perform on stage, whether it is singing, dancing or acting, this is the theatre program for you.
It is a small studio and a makeshift stage, but that doesn't really matter. What
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Dinosaur Live - The Walking with Dinosaurs Live Experience
2Sep07 | 2 comments
Apparently a new show is coming to town: Dinosaurs live Walking with Dinosaurs
This show looks awesome from all the videos I have seen. Unless I missed it, I have yet to see tour dates for Orange County. It includes 15 life-sized robotic dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus Rex in a live performance on stage. Well, as alive as a robot can get.
If you go to
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Dinosaur Live - The Walking with Dinosaurs Live ExperienceOrange County earthquake Santa Ana mountains
2Sep07 | 0 comments
Looks like we just had a small earthquake. USGS indicates a 4.7 centered in the Santa Ana mountains between Santa Ana and Lake Elsinore. It occurred at about 10:29am. I felt it here in Laguna Niguel, but not much shaking and it didn't last long.
Here's a link to the live map of the epicenter of the orange county earthquake area:
usgs
Here's a snapshot of the
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Orange County earthquake Santa Ana mountainsLaguna Niguel Lightning Strike
26Aug07 | 0 comments
A rare August thunderstorm (rare thunderstorm period) blew through southern Orange county today. Here is an image I captured this morning of a lightning strike over Laguna Niguel (or possibly behind it in San Juan Capistrano or Dana point). What a slow moving storm.
I guess these little rain cells are remnants of the hurricane that just blew through Mexico.
No rain where I am but
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Laguna Niguel Lightning StrikeOC Fair
2Aug07 | 0 comments
The OC Fair is great fun for the whole family. There is so much to do. There are rows and rows of food booths and shopping booths. Several stages with music and other acts like the peking acrobats, a comedy juggler, or local kid
groups performing dance and song. As you walk in, there is a small petting zoo with some cute little animals to
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Caspers Wilderness Park
30Jul07 | 0 comments
Many years ago, on a beautiful fall day, I went on a hike in Caspers Wilderness park with a friend. We decided to take a trail that was on the map but in real life was a narrow path of beaten down tall grass. We didn't get far before we ran into our first Tarantula. There wasn't any room to go around, so we jumped over
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Mountain Lions in Orange County
30Jul07 | 0 comments
I was training for a marathon a few years ago. So I spent a lot of time running alone on the biketrail that runs through aliso and wood canyon wilderness park. Sometime all the way to Cooks corner and sometimes deep into the canyon and back.
One day I went for a run to Aliso Creek golf course. As I came back out of the main area and
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orange county photography
13Jul07 | 0 comments
Christmas is coming and portrait Christmas cards will soon be on everyone's mind so it is time for a plug for me. :) If you love to go all out on your Christmas cards, try the gorgeous fine art portrait cards from m&K artworks photography. For your Christmas family portrait this season, combine a beautiful park or beach setting, an exceptional canvas wall portrait, and fine art
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Children's ballet and tap classes and Quarterly shows Lifetime Performing Arts Academy
4Apr07 | 0 comments
The best thing about the children's dance classes at the Lifetime Performing Arts Academy in Aliso Viejo are the quarterly shows. It makes it so much more fun for the kids, especially at a young age, when they can show off the fruits of their labor as often as possible. It seems to me (and I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination) that performing in
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Prehistoric Pets Birthday Party for Kids
30Mar07 | 0 comments
Wow! The kids won't stop talking about this party. We went to a birthday party for two little six year old boys and it was a ton of fun for the little ones. First they got to feed animals, mainly turtles, some really squirmy caterpillar like bugs with long tweezers. Turtles weren't the only hungry creatures in the giant pond in the store. Huge
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Family, Pediatric, and Cosmetic Dentist in Laguna Niguel
27Feb07 | 0 comments
Dental care is so important for kids I thought it would be ok to post about. Let's take my 5 year old daughter's first trip to the dentist. She was quite nervous about it, especially since it was coming just weeks after she had got a shot that didn't go too well. As much as we talked about it for days ahead of time, she still
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Boomers in Irvine - fun for small kids?
2Feb07 | 1 comments
We had some visitors in town and thought we'd try out Boomers in Irvine. I've seen the advertisements quite a bit. I thought the kids were finally getting of age to go there. I had never been there so it was just a guess.
The kids were two boys ages 7 and 4 1/2, and one girl about 5 1/4. It was a beautiful saturday afternoon
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Lifetime Performing Arts Academy Aliso Viejo
21Sep06 | 3 comments
Do your kids love to sing and dance? Are they interested in learning how to play an instrument or do they memorize the lines of every movie they watch? I know my child does. She's constantly reenacting her movie videos. And what small child doesn't love to sing?
Well that Lifetime music academy in Aliso Viejo was created to fill a void in traditional educational programs.
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Zoomars petting zoo and bird park
12Sep06 | 0 comments
Living in south Orange County, it sometimes seems it takes longer to drive to the zoo than the time you spend there. That's why the Jones mini farm in San Juan Capistrano was such a great atraction. While small and only a handful of animals, it provided a nice interaction with animals for young children. A great family outing that didn't require half the day driving.
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JW Tumbles Laguna Niguel
30Aug06 | 1 comments
A great new place opened up in Laguna Niguel in southern Orange County California. JW Tumbles is a children's gym that offers a variety of athletic activities indoors. The philosophy of their core program is helping parents achieve both physical and social goals for their children, while allowing their children to grow at their own pace. Programs are available for babies as young as four months,
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Bears, Buddies & Toys in Laguna Niguel
25Aug06 | 0 comments
Bears, Buddies and Toys just opened up in Laguna Niguel, in south orange county california. Their tagline "It's not just a shop--it's an adventure!" is certainly true as my daughter will attest.
As you walk in, you can't help but notice the great big pirate ship in the middle of the store. Just off to the side of the ship is a clock tower story telling room where
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