Litter training 5 week old kittens

Charity's kittens are almost 5 weeks old now. As you may know from some of my other posts, she stopped caring for them about 2 weeks ago so I've stepped in. They're all currently eating soft food and experimenting with the dry food in Charity's bowl. Now that I know they're getting enough food I can focus on an even yuckier problem....Litter training!

After each meal I put them in the litterbox and Charity has even been kind enough to demonstrate for them on a few occassions but they don't seem to be figuring it out. Right now they're still all living in the nursery (our spare bedroom) which is carpeted, so you can imagine what a mess I get to clean up I considered moving them to our guest bathroom but it's kinda tiny and used a little too frequently to become a cattery.

The kittens have been pottying a lot on the plastic that I put underneath their food dishes to protect the carpet from their experiments with soft food, which is easy enough to clean up but one place I really wouldn't have expected them to chose. They've got 3 different spots that they "frequent" and there are 3 kittens in the litter so I'm not sure if they've all picked one corner to use or if it's just coincidence.

They can easily access the litterbox (it has a ramp that they've been using for weeks to explore the box) and it's filled with non clumping litter. Is there anything I can do to help them transition to the litterbox and save my carpet in the process??

Please help!!!!

why dont you try moving the food bowls somewhere else in the room and leaving the plastic where it is and just move the litterboxes to where the food used to be on top of the plastic stuff that you have down maybe they have got used to doing it on the plastic in that area of the room so when you put the ltter box there they might just start using it, hope this helps you good luck. oh and can i say that its odd that they dont use the litter trays because all the kittens that ive had have went to the litter tray without a problem, this is going to sound uncaring but why dont you rub theyre noses gently into fresh litter and maybe they will get the idea, only a thaught but hope it helps.

As I weaned the last 2 litters, I started wiping their behinds (to stimulate elimination) over the litter box. They then related elimination to the box. At first they didn't even lift their tails, and I had to show them how to do that (they would squat with their tails wrapped around them rather than pulled up). Once done, if they didn't scratch and cover (some did and some didn't), I showed them how to cover their business.

Not necessarily fun to do, but none of them have used anything but the litter box since they were kittens.

When they are that small, leaving the litterbox nearer to their food helps. They sometimes just can't make the distance and will let loose wherever they can. If you can enclose them in a smaller area until they learn litter box that helps as well-