A Musical Cruise For Kids

My parents were always into making vacations into learning opportunities when I was a child. Never did we simply get to lounge by the poolat a hotel, playing our Gameboy’s and ordering cheeseburgers. Of course, at the time, it drove my sister and I nuts. We’d complain, “But this should be vacation!” But, when we both ended up being accepted to very prestigious colleges because of the educational and diverse vacations our parents took us to, we began to see things their way.

One particularly fun vacation we took was on a musical cruise. The whole cruise was based around getting you to delve deeper into musical passions, or even just learn a little bit about multiple sorts of music.

One room was just a massive ballroom full of every sort of instrument you could think about. Children could go and take turns playing around on each one of these, discovering which suited their personality best or which they just liked the sound of best.

Each night on the cruise there was a musical rendition of many of the classic children’s stories in the theater. Seeing our favorite Disney Princesses come out with beautiful voices made us think, “We want to get into singing!”

Which was great because, there was the opportunity for singing lessons on the boat also! I attended three lessons throughout the cruise. On the first we practiced breathing exercises for singing, on the second I learned how to sing high notes, and on the third I learned about vocal vibrato. It was practically a crash course in the instrument that is your voice.

All of the games on the boat were based upon fun methods to learn how to read music. We even eventually all wrote our very own little songs (obviously these were pretty basic).

At the conclusion of the cruise, we were all given recorders and gift cards to a music company the cruise ship had a partnership with.

The whole experience sparked my desire to take piano lessons, which in the long run was one more thing to round off the lovely college application.

If you can’t afford to take your kids on this kind of cruise (I’ll admit I was privileged) try taking them to free performances in you city, and even music museums. Anything to assist them to find what their passions are can give them a head start in life.