Monkey Makers | מנקי מייקרס

Children today are born into a technological world – full of algorithms and smart devices and microchips. But even in this digital world, we still rely on physical products - from clothes, furniture, and toys, to phones, cars, and satellites.

We live in this space between material and software, between human engineering and silicon, between what we have always known and the unknowable future. In fact, it is this precise synthesis of traditional craft and modern invention that usually produces the greatest innovation.

MonkeyMakers is a making activity for children in kindergarten and elementary school, which opens a door to the wide world of development and the creation of physical products. Through our program, children learn how to think creatively, to design and develop products and accessories built for their own needs and those of others - and to actually bring those products to life.

MonkeyMakers allows kids to imagine, develop, and create.
Through a systematic process of planning, thinking, and creating, MonkeyMakers exposes children to the scientific methodologies of experimentation and feedback, and teaches them the value of teamwork

MonkeyMakers gives young students an opportunity to experience true product development, with professional tools and the guidance and supervision of mentor experts

MonkeyMakers helps students understand the objects and aids we use every day, and to imagine other objects that can better the world

MonkeyMakers gives access to "real world" resources and tools such as 3D printers, Lasers cutters etc.

MonkeyMakers turns kindergartens and schools into a temporary space for innovative arts and crafts, development and production

MonkeyMakers works with hand tools such as hammers and screwdrivers

MonkeyMakers offers a very wide range of making and learning programs, both in formal and informal education, with our mobile makerspace, and in other, existing makerspaces.

Activities include spark days, yearly school programs of one or two days a week, and a whole range of detailed daily - or broader - programs, including teacher training, curriculum writing, and more.

MonkeyMakers’ making activities offer children a whole set of concepts, values, and skills through experience and action. First and foremost, we allow children to understand that (almost) anything is possible - and that everything is in their hands.

And above all, our children learn to work together. They experience the importance of the team and of each link in the chain of development and production. They learn to fail and then to get up and try again, and the accumulated value of experience, even if it is less successful. They learn a diverse, multidisciplinary, enabling, non-blocking, creative and non-schematic approach.

Along the way, they create wonderful objects and accessories, and sometimes - they find an interest that will last a lifetime.

Through MonkeyMakers, children learn a variety of scientific subjects, including technology and engineering, mathematics and physics. At the same time, they learn to understand and feel materials, and how to work with them using traditional and advanced machinery, from hammers and nails, to CNC machines and 3D printers.

Ron Kal is a lifelong maker. He studied at the Technion and the Hebrew University and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for a decade. In the army he is a lieutenant colonel (res). At home, he and his partner Noa are raising four enthusiastic makers.