If you want to give your children a good grounding in the basics of music, there is no need to wait until they are old enough to receive formal musical training in school — you can begin to educate them at home. In my house, we purchased an inexpensive thumb piano — a musical instrument which is native to the African continent — and with this we were able to begin to train our children to understand basic musical ideas such as an ascending or descending musical scale. We could teach them these concepts easily because it is not necessary for someone to know how to read music in order to play this instrument.