Tired of silly voices, outrageous antics and the brain drain of just about every children’s video on YouTube, John Havard set out to make something better for his three year-old son.
Now star of the Cowboy Jack show on his own YouTube channel, John has created an educational and entertaining video series that children will want to watch and parents can feel good about.
“Every week, we take kids on a different virtual field trip. There’s a couple different aspects to it: part of it is play places and things that kids are used to going to. But, we bring an educational element into it,” John says. “We also go to places that kids don’t normally get to go and show them some things that they don’t normally get to experience, like going inside the police station and meeting an officer and talking to him about why he became an officer and kind of the ins and outs of the job and getting to look inside a police car, fire truck, all that kind of stuff.”
The industrial sales rep who’s been working remotely since the beginning of COVID-19 restrictions in early 2020 says he began creating videos for the series in February 2021 for the sole purpose of creating an alternative to the sometimes bad influences on YouTube’s children’s platform.
“There’s a lot of good shows for kids out there. My son is three and a half, and he was really obsessed with this one guy who’s a very prominent kids, educational show maker. And the guy is fantastic. My son’s learned a ton from him, but one of his gimmicks to keep kids’ attention is doing a kind of a silly voice and having some really over-the-top, loud, in-your-face type of action. And, so a lot of times when my son was watching that show, he was bouncing off the walls at the same time, and it got to be a little bit too much for us,” John says.
So, intent on being a model for effective communication skills and good behavior, Cowboy Jack invites children to see more of the world and learn about interesting topics while never talking down to them or instigating viewers to act out in irresponsible ways.
“It’s called Cowboy Jack, but we’re not doing country accents or anything like that — no goofy voices because we want kids to get the phonetics of talking like an adult,” John says.
Only a few months old, the series already has almost 20 episodes that range in topics, from go-karts, horses, dogs and rock climbing to science experiments, types of fish and the longest car wash at Buc-ee’s.
Despite its production value and impressive audio, the series is simply a two-person project: each episode is shot by his wife, Andrea. The couple has made the weekly production their time to get away from their children for a break and enjoy time together.
“It’s become a crazy, fun pastime for me and my wife; it’s our time to get a babysitter and go do some things. It’s the most fun we’ve had as adults in a long time. I mean, her being behind behind the camera — she’s my cameraman — and we have to edit out probably half of the episode that we filmed because she’s just laughing hysterically at me,” John says. “We just wanted to give parents something that’s a little bit more on the wholesome side and made through the eyes of a parent so that they don’t have to feel guilty sitting their kids in front of the TV so that they can get the dishes done, or do the laundry or cook dinner.”
I think this is great! God bless y’all!