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Hey all

I've got a very keen 5 year old here who has taken an interest in daddy's hobby and has just completed her first mini. An Empire horse that I had lying round!

Does anyone else get their kids involved in the hobby? If so, has anyone got recommendations about suitable models for someone so young? Ideally they'd be interesting for kids and require little by way of assembly.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

My son who is also five has an interest in painting ''models" since about 4.

I Let him paint bloodbowl miniaturers, brettonian trebuchet crew, horses, skeletal horses, models that have missing weapons, and monsters - warhounds, etc.

I try to make sure they're metal models, though, so I can strip them easily when he wants to try again. I'll give him some plastics, or some terrain, if I'm willing to lose it :-)

I'd suggest Marines, because they've got tons of flat spaces, fun to paint.

Have you looked at Reaper Bones? They are not brittle, so largely break-proof, don't need priming, and are cheap enough that you can afford to make mistakes/not paint them brillianty.

reapers bones is a good idea if it's a girl and your in uk as im not sure they exist elsewhere there are FROZEN not kinder eggs that have prepainted Frozen figs in roughly 28mm size

You could buy some somwhat higher end (as in reasonably detailed phtalate free hard plastic) farm equipment and livestock toys. Make a cardboard barn and such for her to paint, and you could make a nice DIY playset together.

If she's specifically interested in daddys/mommys toys, 1 piece metal minis sounds like a good idea.

Keep him away from spikey bits of Chaos Space Marines!

You can get big pots of dinos, army men, animals, etc from various toy shops. Use some Halfords grey primer on them and let her go to town on them with some watered down cheap acrylic paint you can get from most hobby/artists stores (check out your nearest Works store as they generally have squeezy bottles of paint and stuff reasonably cheap).

Some excellent suggestions so far people, keep 'em coming!

Bones is actually a great idea, especially the larger size ones (which are still very reasonably priced).

I don't buy the whole, no-primer thing though. That worked out terribly for me. I wasn't using reaper paints.
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Gonna jump on the Bones bandwagon.

The models are cheap and have pretty good levels of detail. A kid set up with a few colors and some washes could have a lot of fun. Giant Spider is a great little model.

Space Marine press fits are nice simple models that are suitable for kids.

even though it requires assembly rebs deadzone team would be a good idea, my daughter is 3 and loves 'daddy's aliens' so you could build em and she can paint em.
Ooo and doctor minis that some times come with doctor who adventures magazine we got a lot last year and she loves the daleks, weeping angels cybermen etc

Found a good cheap supplier for Reaper 'bones', so I think I'll give them a go and let you know how it goes.

Thanks again, everyone.

so how did it go?

They arrived a couple of days ago. I've given a few a quick blast of white primer and she has started one, the Medusa model.

She does really like the fact that there are girls to paint!

Further updates to come!

You know my 7 year old has been bugging me to paint as well. Maybe I should let her have a crack at it. I got some old Gabbos and a troll she could paint. Great Idea.

I'd suggest Plastic Soldier company tanks. Easy assembly, quite a lot of flat surfaces, cheap [ around £12 gets you 3 in 1/72 scale] and they can have fun just throwing paint around for weathering.

I got my daughter some of the plaster cast stuff you can get at craft stores, animals, cartoonish people and so on. She got to pick them out and then sit and paint while I was painting.

I also had her start helping me with terrain items and basing. She quickly 'mastered' dry brushing and loved painting on splotches of watered down glue and adding static grass/flock. I also gave her some simpler figures I had which were excess (some 2nd edition Space Hulk terminators and similar figures). With her figures, I let her pick colors and just go to town as she saw fit, but then would make suggestions on how to make them 'better' by showing her some simple techniques.

At about 10 years old she started painting some figures on her own (maybe with a little help on faces).

I picked up a fair few of those snapfit boxes with 3 marines, one with 4 eldar, the AM one and ork ect. and let them pick and choose. they were thrilled. quick to build and relatively hard to break. so the youngsters had a blast.

Something else I did that seemed a winner with my daughter...

I posted a few pictures of things she painted to some friendly forums, giving her credit. She LOVED reading the feedback and suggestions folks gave her, and that motivated her to paint more and do better.

some old school pweter marines, or maybe a 54mm model as a teaching tool?

Glad to hear the Bones are working out. I've got a bunch that are probably destined for my son when he's old enough.

For kids you really can't go wrong with figs that bounce when you drop them and don't break!

I can't believe nobody's said it: big cheap bags of green army men! A perfect starting point, especially given that at the end of the day, that's what we're really playing at

 CptJake wrote:
Something else I did that seemed a winner with my daughter...

I posted a few pictures of things she painted to some friendly forums, giving her credit. She LOVED reading the feedback and suggestions folks gave her, and that motivated her to paint more and do better.

what is the site my daughter is going to be some painting herself hopefully next week and wouldn't mind finding her a friendly site for her to get comments on. and I'd love to see your daughters mins too.

here is the link for impact miniatures

http://www.impactminiatures.com/

the models you get with the starter paint sets are clip together so would probably be ok for kids. also some of the older citadel stuff where the figs come pretty much complete.

I think it is time for some pictures of the painted minis now

totally agreed we want to see pics