Are 0-3 materials Montessori materials?

Question: what is the origin of the materials that are in Montessori 0-3 Training Albums?

Juneau Montessori toddler classroom shelf

On many occasions I have said "The Montessori materials for 0-3..." to the folks at Centro Nascita Montessori and they look confused, "but Montessori did not develop these materials. The Montessori materials are those that she developed for the Casa dei Bambini." To these pedagogues, Montessori's materials are in a different category. The 0-3 materials came after and were developed by Adele Costa Gnocchi's students (Adele Costa Gnocchi was one of Montessori's students from her 1909 course.) From 1947 to her death in 1952 she was in contact with Adele Costa Gnocchi but she was not living in Italy, and while the study was being done for the youngest children and the newborn, she was not directly involved.

That said, it is all just semantics, after all, which words we choose to use... 

But we are so very careful with the words we use because we know that words reflect culture and carry meaning in and of themselves, so we do want to be attentive with words and clear about why we have chosen them. 

For example, we are very careful in Montessori circles not to say "toilet training" because, though we train (conditioned experience, think Pavlov) puppies to use the newspaper and then later to go outside, we offer a learning experience to children. 

But isn't it interesting that we are so careful not to say it regarding babies who are learning to pee in the toilet but we use it almost 100% of the time for us adults in most every context. We go to trainings to learn. We have a training center where we get a diploma. We are trainers, those who teach others. Is it disrespectful to say "we are getting a Montessori training" because it has a different context than "we are learning about ourselves and how we can work with children in a respectful way"? Are we being 'trained' (conditioned) or are we 'learning something through our own direct experiences' like learning to use the toilet is for a young child?.

So I've been 'trained' here in Italy not to say "Montessori materials" for 0-3. They are simply not her personal inventions. 

But who did invent them?

My understanding from reading the testimonial by Gianna Gobbi and Rita Carusi on  page 116 of the book Radici nel Futura: La vita di Adele Costa Gnocchi (Roots for the future: the life of Adele Costa Gnocchi, by Grazia Honegger Fresco):

During the 10 years that the Montessori Assistants to Infancy School (la Scuola Assistente all'Infanzia Montessori, AIM) was Adele Costa Gnocchi's "Training Center" (before it became a government run program) they created, all of the students, a selection of materials that were designed and invented and then could be experimented with, under the direct supervision of Adele Costa Gnocchi. 

"Fin dagli inizi fu assai formativo per le allieve imparare a progettare e a costruire gli oggetti..." 

"From the beginning it was an important part of the formative experience as students to learn how to design (progettare) and build (costruire) materials based on what we were observing" and 

"andavano studiati..."

"they had to be studied" meaning the clothes, the furniture, the toys (all of the diverse aspects of the material environment) had to be understood based on the aim of the child's direct use of them rather than based on the practicality of the adults needs, as was the general custom at the time (and still today in the commercial offerings).

In the footnote to the sentence I summarized above goes into more detail about how they had invented many materials after 10 years of working on them (the students at the Scuola AIM), it seems that in particular, Laura  Bolasco, under Adele's direct supervision, designed various small pieces of furniture and diverse wooden materials based on "the creative efforts of all of the students" 

"piccoli mobili e numerosi oggetti, sopratutto in legno, particolarmente studiati per i primi tre anni di vita. Non tutelati da brevetto, vennero facilmente imitati e rivenduti ad alto prezzo negli stati uniti, sotto altra... paternita'!"

"small furniture e various objects, mostly made out of wood, and carefully designed for the first three years of life. Not being protected by a patent, they were easily imitated and sold at high prices in the United States, by another ... lineage!"

In the article "the Cosmic task of the youngest children" also by Grazia Honegger Fresco, recently published and available online through the link below, you can find this excerpt where she talks about inventing materials.

www.journalofmore.org/articles/10.16993/jmre.10/

"Just after receiving my diploma from the School AIM, I began working at the Scuoletta at Palazzo Taverna in Rome, directed by Signorina Costa Gnocchi (as everyone called her). I was working with 10 children between the ages of 14 and 30 months. We soon realized that the children between one and two needed something more. At one point in 1949 or 1950, I don't remember precisely, I started to create materials that were made specifically to meet the need that I saw emerging intensely in the youngest ones. These materials were designed to respond to the passion for the in-and-out activities that the children, driven to find the many spaces into which they might insert different kinds of objects, and do it in all possible variations.

The first piece I built was a large dowel with rings. I made it by attaching the end of a broomstick to a wooden disk (six inches in diameter and three quarters of an inch thick). I put three wooden curtain rings on the dowel. It was very successful: the children would carry it around and from time to time they would stop to take off the rings and put them back on, repeating this action with great attention. 

This encouraged me to create other things such as simple wooden shapes cut out with a jigsaw and inspired by the Flat Wooden Insets, commonly referred to as the Geometric Cabinet, and historically called Geometric Insets in Wood, or Cabinet of Wooden Insets and Frames) just one or two circles with large knobs for easy grasping. Later on, some colleagues started designing and building educational toys as well. We built cardboard trays with compartments for the first simple experiences in gluing as well as trays for collections of pictures, so important as an aid to emerging language. We also made frames that had three large buttons, like the one I saw in a photo from a Montessori Nido in Sochi, Russia (Il Quaderno Montessori vol. 110, page 6, 2011).

Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, one of Adele Costa Gnocchi’s students, Laura Benedettini Bolasco, designed and produced many new types of materials. Some of these were even bought by the Americans who had come to Rome to study the new methods for the youngest children (In 1963 Rita Brandimarte, an Italian woman, studied under Adele Costa Gnocchi and earned a 0-3 diploma. She then moved to the USA and is the first to introduce Montessori 0-3 to Americans, the first ones were Virginia Varga and Pam Wise. In 1966 the first toddler Montessori childcare is opened in Dayton, Ohio.)
It was common practice thereafter in our training courses for 0-3 educators for the students to develop their own handcrafting abilities in order to respond to the needs of these youngest children. Inventing and creating educational materials is an excellent opportunity for adults to reflect on children's motor development in this phase of life."