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Put your thumb on your banjo head so that you are just a little but shy of touching the rim with the tip of your thumb. The pad of your thumb should be against the fifth string. (And this is where text kind of sucks for this- if you were here you'd see a sort of greasy spot where my thumb has been hitting over the years. And no, I'm not that much of a slob it happens to just about everybody's banjo at some point)
Now rest your middle fingernail on the first string.
Allrighty. We're almost there.
Take a look at your hand and where it's at on the banjo. You'll see that you can just raise it up a hair and drop that middle fingernail down to strike the first string. Do that.
Don't flail around or open and close your hand or flick your fingers. Just use your thumb as a sort of pivot point to rear back (you won't have to go very far) and swing in down to strike the string with your nail. Let the string pop off of the fingernail. Try it hard. Try it light. Try it in between and try it just right.
(Sorry had a Suess moment there. Shouldn't happen anywhere . . .arrgh)
Once you get comfortable with the idea of just dropping your hand down to strike the first string try the same thing on your second, third and fourth. To hit those inside strings - well, look at your hand again. Your thumb is lying on the fifth string. If you close that webbing between your index finger and thumb you should see that you can swing you hand so that it's over the string you want to hit.
We're not talking big motion here. It's just a hair this way and a hair that way. Don't bee all stiff and rigid. Relax. Mess with it a while. You'll drive everybody in the house nuts, but that's why you wanted to play the banjo, right?
After the strike the next step is the strum.
Hit a string. Any string.
After you do that close the webbing between your thumb and index finger so that you hand comes back over the strings and your middle fingernail is over the third or fourth string.
While all of this is happening your thumb is staying in place.
Once you've reared back enough (and what that is is up to you but three strings is a safe bet) strike down across the strings with your middle fingernail.
So it's pick, rear back, strum.
Do that a few times. Get used to it. Keep the thumb in place. As you pick and as you strum it's a good idea to keep a sort of straight wrist. Your forearm is doing all of the work here using your thumb as a pivot point.
After you extend your hand for the strum you'll see that your thumb is putting pressure on the fifth string. Roll your thumb off of the fifth string, bring it up to your hand and then drop it back in place on the fifth string. It's sort of a rolling motion.