Making My Own Mah Jongg Aids

Today I learned that a class I am teaching soon has ballooned to twice as many students as I normally have in this class. It is a Mah Jongg strategy class so the students should be fairly good players. I have taught classes this big before and they are lots of fun, but I need bigger visual aids to make the class successful.

I have had an idea for a while for that I could use some big cards of Mah Jongg tiles to show students hands. I searched the internet to see if anything like this existed and could not find anything close.

I considered what it would take to photograph each tile and print them on card stock. My biggest problem with that is the card stock was not as stiff as I want for cards to be able to stand up against a white board. I decided I would paint the tile faces on water color paper and get exactly what I want.

Mah Jongg tiles can be very intricate so I started by painting the North, South and East winds, which are only red letters and Black Symbols. It helps that I only needed a kids water color set.

I love the way they turned out. It’s going to be a busy weekend of painting. I am not looking forward to doing Jokers. I might not copy my intricate Jokers Tiles, but just write Jokers diagonally across the card.

I envision lots of uses for these cards once I have them, but I am also going to have to come up with a traveling rack for holding them to display when I don’t have a white board.

Now I’m in search of strong magnets. The arts and crafts projects never end.