Anyone who has been in Boulder even five minutes knows that its surroundings are beautiful. And if you have young children, chances are you know the work of performers and environmental educators Jeff and Paige.
Now Jeff Kagan and Paige Doughty are combining their zany antics with the local outdoors, joining area Emmy Award-winning producer Dia Sokol Savage to create a new nature-based kids’ TV series shot entirely in Boulder County.
Designed for children ages 2 to 8, Savage is currently shopping the show, dubbed “Rainbow Socks,” to distributors and streaming platforms, including PBS and YouTube. If all goes well, the three hope to have the show on the air in 2026, or possibly even late this year. It is the first children’s nature program shot in Boulder since “Big Green Rabbit” in 2007.
The show features Kagan and Doughty plus Shaun Derik, a national youth speaker and performer, as the Rainbow Socks Rangers. Together they have adventures with Colorado plants and animals and transform themselves into loony scientists to teach about the natural world through singing, dancing, playing and exploration.
”We teach complex concepts in a simple manner appropriate for young kids,” said Kagan. Topics introduced in the inaugural season include pollination, lightning safety and the science behind density.
Doughty said the two are “taking what we’ve already done through 20 years of live performing here and expanding it to a TV screen, with dialogue and acting. We go way deeper into each character and creature” than they can in their live performances.
Five episodes are completed, and to help fund the remaining three of the first season, they are holding a fundraiser on Aug. 24 at the Chautauqua Auditorium from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., where they will showcase an episode and entertain the crowd. Savage hopes it will raise $50,000 of the approximately $300,000 needed to finish the season.
Tickets are $15 for everyone over age 2 and can be bought through the Colorado Chautauqua Auditorium website.
The goal of “Rainbow Socks,” Savage said, is to encourage children to love nature. “We believe that when kids fall in love with nature — its animals, plants and wild spaces — they grow into the kind of people who will protect it. Love leads to care, and care leads to action.”
But there are other nature shows targeting kids. What makes “Rainbow Socks” different, according to Savage, is that it takes the time to develop stories and characters rather than using the fast-paced animation and brief content that are common in some other children’s programming.
”We really wanted to slow things down, using the right pace for developing minds,” she said. “It’s all about tapping into the child’s imagination.”
Adds Doughty, “What’s important to me is that we are featuring real people and places. We aren’t sensationalizing nature. We foster a nature connection, to say slow down and go on a hike.”
The show also flips the script on usual children’s TV by ending episodes urging kids to go outside — “Now turn off this show,” they say, “there’s so much to explore!”
Though filming locations could broaden in future seasons, the first season of “Rainbow Socks” is entirely filmed locally. The crew created a set for Rainbow Socks Rangers Cottage at a Longmont barn, for indoor shots, that Savage said was inspired by Chautauqua Park’s Ranger Cottage. Outdoor filming so far has been at Longmont’s YaYa Farm and Sunflower Farms, and at the Lost Gulch overlook near the top of Flagstaff Mountain.
It features local children recruited through Kagan and Doughty’s broad network of area kids of different ages, backgrounds and ethnicities. The show also strives to reach Spanish-speaking and rural communities that the three believe are often left out of mainstream educational media.
The three and Derik have long pedigrees in entertainment. Savage is a filmmaker who helped create MTV’s “16 & Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” franchises. Kagan and Doughty, a married couple, have used their mutual academic background in environmental education to create entertainment beloved by area children for some 20 years. Derik, who divides his time between New York City and Mexico City, is a motivational speaker, singer, actor and dancer.
”We created ‘Rainbow Socks’ to empower kids to explore nature, science and storytelling,” Doughty said. “Now we’re asking the community that helped inspire the show to help us finish what we started.”
If I lived there, I’d be there. Naturally.
Awesome & Thank You!!!
Please LMK if I can help with Spanish language efforts to engage children in that community.
Have a great day!