Help teaching 4 week kittens to use litter box. Mom cat isn't showing them.

We have a foster mom with her 4 week kittens, they've been here since a month before birth.  The kittens started climbing out of the nesting box in the last week, but especially the last few days.  I put out a little box with litter for them when they started getting out, and have tried putting them in it, scratching around in it, and tried pottying them in it like if they were orphans (which I've never had, so may be doing it wrong).  They have yet to use it, but are starting to pee in various places around the bathroom they live in.  I did catch one of them while he was going, so I picked him up quick and put him in the litter box, but I guess he had already finished.  I poured the pee he had just done into the litter box (it had kind of pooled on the surface of the cat bed).  Mom cat promptly went and covered it for him .  I removed that bed, because it had been peed on by them a couple times, and despite Nature's Miracle, still seemed to be enticing (they never slept in that particular bed, only peed on it).  Now the pee is happening just on the floor.  Is there anything I can do to help them learn to go to the box for that?  I introduced solids today for the first time, but none of them were interested, but I expect them to catch on to that in the next couple days and then using the box will be even more important.

Mama cat has good litter habits herself, and has never had an accident here.  Well, she actually has the annoying litter habit of scratching forever and a day before and after going, emptying a ton of litter out of the box in the process, but at least she's going in the box.  I do have a new litter pan on the way with higher sides for her (but a low front).  I'm thinking of making a step up to it for the kittens to use so maybe they will learn from her better.

At 4 wks old, they are just now starting to gain control of their own out put. Mom is still probably doing a fair amount of prompting/clean-up.

Here are some things that have worked for us.

1.) Kitten Attract Litter
2.) MULTIPLE litter boxes.
3.) A good enzymatic cleaner

We had a litter of 6 kittens that were 6 wks old when we got them and they had been living solely outside. So, had not even seen a litter box. They were kept in a spare bedroom (no furniture, just cat trees, blankets, etc...) and there were litter boxes everywhere. There was 1 litter box in each corner of the room and 2 smack in the middle of the room, plus an extra. (Some of these were makeshift boxes made using large food storage containers.)

Within a week of using the kitten attract litter all were using the litter box w/o accidents. We slowly took away litter boxes (they now have 4.)

They're in a small room (a bathroom), but the kitten attract may help.  I use pine pellets for their mom, and had hoped to have them use the same, but I may need to start them with something more attractive. Is the mom likely to try to use their box is it has the kitten attract in it?  She would make a massive mess if she did that.  I'm using Nature's Miracle right now. Is there a better enzymatic cleaner?  I removed all but one cat bed and their original nest box with towels, to hopefully make it easier to clean the (vinyl) floors in there.  It's easier to wash towels than cat beds.

What I did with the litter of kittens we had recently was add a few extra small litter pans in areas where they kept going. Mine loved going on soft bedding or blankets so I removed most of those or set the extra litter pan on them. It took a little bit of time a patients but it worked like a charm.

The mother cat didn't teach them so much as they just kind of started doing it on their own, they played in it more than anything for the first little while lol. Sometimes I think they just play so hard that they forget how close to the litter box they are and pop a squat right where they are. Best of luck!

All you need to do is have a very low sided litterbox, like one of those cardboard soda case bottoms, put regular NON CLUMPING litter in it, and contain them to a very small area, I mean small as in like a good sized cage.

Plop them in it, scoot around so their paws get the digging feeling, and that's that.

Kittens don't really need to be trained, it's natural instinct for them to go where they can bury it.

Natural instinct part is covering up their smell/scent to prevent the attraction of predators

They are going all over because at that age the litterbox needs to be literally right there, like a foot away at all times.

In 2 weeks they will be old pros!

They're doing well with peeing in the boxes now, but have yet to poop in one.  I had 4 boxes in the room (which is just a small bathroom, so it's practically half litterbox at this point ), but added a fifth last night where one of them had pooped for the first time.  Mom must still be taking care of poop otherwise, because that's the first we've seen.  They're just starting to eat some wet food though, so I think we'll start seeing more.  I don't see that I can cage them with a litter box because they need to be with their mom and she would be beyond miserable to be stuck in a little cage with them.  The accidents didn't seem to be an issue of being too far from the box in that several times one of them was wedging himself behind the litterbox to go on the floor back there.  I had to tape the box to the wall and plug up cracks around the litter box.  Now that they're getting the box for peeing, I'm hopeful they'll be solid with it soon.

Yay! Keep on introducing. Some times you cann tell if they are going to poop. Set them in the litter box then. Would love to see pictures of there progress.