Want to Play Mahjong with Your Kids? This Colorful Set Is a Family Game Night Winner

If your family game night could use an infusion of excitement, allow me to make a suggestion: mahjong! The game has its origins in China and involves drawing and matching tiles to put together a winning hand. It’s had a huge resurgence in popularity in the past few years, thanks to its screen-free and social nature. And get this: Mahjong can be surprisingly kid-friendly with the right set! 

But wait, isn’t mahjong too complex for young kids? Not so, says Nicole Wong, founder of The Mahjong Project, author of Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Diaspora, and the mom of a 2-year-old. 

“Mahjong is a fantastic activity for kids and families to do together,” she says, noting that she’s played the game with children as young as 4 years old. “It requires matching, counting, and pattern recognition — all things kids are immersed in regularly at school or [through] other kid-friendly games.”

As a family activity, “mahjong creates opportunities for intergenerational connection,” she adds, “not just between parents and kids but with grandparents as well.”

Wong recommends Bo & Mei’s Mahjong Together set, which was created by founder Mai Truong as a way to help her own daughters connect to their cultural identities. (Truong’s heritage is Vietnamese; her husband’s is Chinese.) “There was a lack of resources for families like ours to find these modern and accessible ways to connect to our cultures,” Truong says. “I set out to fill that gap.”

Billed as “the first kid-friendly, family-ready mahjong set designed for intergenerational play,” Mahjong Together is a Chinese-style mahjong set intended for players ages 3-100+. (If you want to play American-style mahjong with your kids, a Joker Add-On Set is available for $15.) It has all the pieces of a traditional mahjong set, reimagined with simplified rules and five levels of play in order to give kids an accessible starting point to the game.

The $120 set includes 144 illustrated, lightweight wooden tiles; wooden dice; an illustrated instruction booklet; and a quick reference card with tips. It all comes packaged in a suitcase-style box for storage and travel, along with a suede canvas zipper bag. 

The wooden tiles are light enough for young children to handle, versus the heavier acrylic or melamine tiles of some modern sets. But, Truong says, “they still have that ‘click-clack’ feel that mahjong players love.” The bright illustrations are designed with young players in mind, too: “Our colorful illustrations help differentiate between the suits, which traditional sets don’t, which can sometimes lead to confusion for kids and adults with vision impairment,” explains Truong. 

The mahjong set has a nearly perfect 4.9-star average rating from 27 reviews at the time of writing, with people calling the set “beautiful” and saying how much their kids love playing it. “A well made and adorable set,” writes one Mahjong Together reviewer on the Bo & Mei site. “My 3 year old enjoyed playing a matching game with me and could clearly tell the tiles apart. The packaging and instructions were also fantastic. I look forward to having this set for my kids for years to come.”

Another review raves, “I can’t tell you how much it means to have a toy that’s actually fun and teaches the kids something at the same time … and that even Grandma can participate in!! We’ve already made so many family game night and memories playing together. The tiles are SO well made and thoughtful: the illustrations, the wooden texture and the weight are perfect for little kids hands and for adults to enjoy too!”

Learning to play mahjong has been on my ever-growing list of fun things I want to do; if I could get my whole family to learn, all the better. And even though my kids are old enough to learn with a traditional set, the cheery, intergenerational design of Mahjong Together makes this one a game night winner in my book.