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My 4 year old has finally noticed that I troll away with paint a brush. I've
given my niece and nephew Bones and Mage Knight models before, but
they were both older when I tried to get them to do that. My son's fine motor
skills aren't really well developed, so I'm thinking I should start him off on
larger kids blocks or something.

Any advice.

You could try dollar store figures. They don’t need to be green army men, anything with some textured surfaces should work.

Maybe a tank or robot toy?

 greatbigtree wrote:
You could try dollar store figures. They don’t need to be green army men, anything with some textured surfaces should work.

Maybe a tank or robot toy?

Some friends are recommending snap fit kits. I haven't wandered outside of a
specialty gamestore in a long time. I'll have to see what's out there.

I recently gave my 4 year old a horse and rider out of a box of fantasy miniatures that I had lying around as she wanted to paint something.

I just told her that she just needed too make sure she washed her brush when changing colours and to wipe the brush on the paper plate when she had some paint on it so it wasn't a big blob and off she went.

To be fair she did a pretty good job on it, I'll get a picture up later when the internet on my phone decides to start working again.

If anything I wouldn't concern yourself with the fine motor control, that will come with time and this would also be a great way for them to refine their skills. It would probably help if you popped the model on the end of a holder as well so it's easier for them to turn it without getting paint all over themselves (Though it will happen anyway...)

Just give them something that you're not too bothered about, the green army men idea is quite a good one since it's quite inexpensive, just prime one for them and let them get on with it and enjoy themselves

Snap fit kits are pretty reasonably priced. They do suffer the same "small fiddly bits" to paint that other models do.

I suggested Dollar Store items as they're cheap... you can buy a whole bag of toys for $2 instead of $10 for 3-5 dudes. Also, the details tend to be larger, and less "all over the place". With larger details, it's easier to teach drybrushing and washing, which are the two techniques I think are important for beginners to learn... after thinning their paint.

Prime them for your kid and away you go.

My sons are 7 and 9, and we started out with Tyranids and Necrons. Both models are fairly simple with basecoat, wash, drybrush to paint. My youngest lost interest fairly quickly (no surprise to me) but my eldest got through 5 Necrons before calling it a day. We've played a handful of simplified Kill Team games... but that's getting well ahead of the point.

Yeah I'll head out to a place sometime. Michaels or dollar store.

As promised

This was the horse she did



And the Dark Eldar she did

Paint stand is prob ably a good idea. I don't use one myself, but I think he would.

Reaper bones miniatures - cheap, unbreakable, easy to paint, don't require priming or cleanup

I’m giving my eldest (6) a plastic 2e tactical squad so he can start where I did

Tactical marines could be easy ones as long as they are ones with less bling. Then they are also easy to strip paint if you don't want to keep buying new practice models all the time.

Eventually maybe she'll start her own army and give a dad hell in game

 Supershandy wrote:
As promised

This was the horse she did



And the Dark Eldar she did

Tell her to keep it up

 Danielle Rae wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
As promised

This was the horse she did



And the Dark Eldar she did

Tell her to keep it up

She has to be in the mood to do it

But I will let her know

I have a box of old minis from 90's and a lot of LOTR miniatures. My kids used that to learn how to hold and use brushes Now my 7-year old son is doing pretty good with Primaris Space Marines from Dark Imperium and bringing them to tabletop quality using drybrush and shades. My 4-year old daugther is working on some horses and still minis from mentioned box