Monograph

Discover the illustrated monograph of the Museo delle Cianfrusaglie [Museum of Knick-Knacks]

Discover and request the illustrated monograph “Cianfrusaglie. L’Asilo San Martino di Trento e il metodo delle sorelle Agazzi” dedicated to the Museum of Cianfrusaglie preserved by the Ente San Martino of Trento. This unique in-depth study focuses on the Agazzian Method. Published in 2020, this 270-page volume is rich in illustrations and was curated by Francesca Cristellotti, Stefano Giovanazzi, and Morena Quardi. It offers an essential historical and artistic value for enthusiasts of culture and pedagogy.

The Museo delle Cianfrusaglie [Museum of Knick-Knacks]

For those who did not attend preschool during the years when the Agazzian method was the foundation of the educational activity, it would be difficult to understand the meaning of the Museum of Chachkas and even more so to imagine its use. So, what does it consist of and what was its purpose?
Among the daily activities carried out by the teachers was inviting the children to bring small objects of sentimental value or everyday use to preschool—toys, cutouts from illustrated magazines, small containers—or simple fragments of various materials—glass, wood, iron, ceramic, plastic—with the goal of using them to conduct mini-lessons about their physical characteristics—color, shape, texture, weight—and their functions. All these objects, organized and stored in boxes labeled with their educational purpose, make up the Museum of Chachkas.
The children’s attention, which spontaneously lingered on these details, trivialities, or chachkas indeed, was guided by the teacher toward a correct and increasingly sophisticated use of language.
Preschool, for children, is an opportunity to open themselves to a largely unfamiliar world made up of people, objects, actions, but also words with which to name reality. The daily exercise of listening, remembering, thinking, and speaking is a hallmark of the Agazzian method.

Nature Teaches Us

Complexity stimulates our desire to learn. From a very young age, observing changes in human expressions, animals, and plants triggers our innate enjoyment of interpretation, and the awareness of how creative nature can be inspires us to empathize with it.
In light of this, gardening, one of the fundamental experiences proposed by sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi, takes on a special, symbolic meaning: caring for a young plant, which children learn to cultivate during their lessons, becomes a longing for knowledge.
We can recognize a plant by its shape, stem, leaves, flowers, fruits, and roots; and taking a step further, we can distinguish roots that delve into the soil from aerial roots, the stem from the trunk, and understand the complex phenomena that influence it: the action of gravity and climatic events such as wind, rain, sunlight, snow, and ice; we can also observe plants and animals that live on it and feed on it. We might also notice the falling of leaves and the soil that regenerates thanks to them, observing the duration of these processes—the long wait when everything seems still, while imperceptibly it changes with the slow alternation of seasons. Gardening helps us understand nature, so rich and varied, constantly evolving, capable of expressing new potentials that lead to unexpected wonders, and to comprehend life as a complex balance between present and future needs: a plant may lose its leaves in autumn to retain the vitality needed to rebloom in spring; it may stand out from others in shape and color, thus having greater opportunities to adapt, but to regenerate it still needs to be in symbiosis with other living organisms. Humans also participate in this fervor: they move and migrate in search of physical and spiritual nourishment.

The San Martino Nursery School

The San Martino Nursery School was established in Trento at the end of the century, alongside the pioneering educational experience that sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi were undertaking during the same years in Mompiano, a suburban neighborhood of Brescia that, in many ways, resembles San Martino.
Twenty-five years later, they will be the ones to form a new generation of teachers and to give life to the renewal of educational methods in Trentino: during the summer of 1923, the sisters held refresher courses for kindergarten teachers in Trento; in 1927 and 1928, they trained new preschool teachers and inspired courses for the different levels of the school system in the region.


The preschool education is transformed thanks to their continuous commitment to improving the knowledge of educators and to renewing the areas where the educational experience unfolds: from caring for the teaching and auxiliary staff to decisions regarding the location of the building, the furnishing of the rooms, and the children’s wardrobe.
In the early 1930s, it was time for the San Martino Nursery School to adopt the Agazzian method, and the Sisters of Maria Bambina, who have been caretakers and educators of the school since 1897, will practically apply it until 1975, when they will hand over the nursery to a new generation of teachers: over the course of a century, religious and lay teachers alternated passionately to enrich this experience with new methodological horizons.
Many people, in various roles, have contributed over the years to giving soul to the San Martino Nursery: think of those who built it with love, those who reconstructed it after World War II, those who in those terrible years welcomed and fed children and adults worn down by suffering; those who offered comfort, and those who, by leaving their belongings as an inheritance, made it possible for this work to continue to flourish.
An important community legacy, a fundamental act of charity, mission, and education, the educational experience lived at the San Martino Nursery has helped shape free men and women, and with them, a humanity capable of facing the complex reality in which we live.

The educational field

A century later, are we truly far from the feelings that motivated Rosa and Carolina to undertake such an experience? Or can we share their ethical effort of caring for others, in response to primary needs, the desire for culture, and the fundamental question of meaning that has always dwelled within each of us?
Luigi Giussani writes: “[…] this is what education is. The word ‘reality’ is to the word ‘education’ as the goal is to a journey. The goal is the entire meaning of human striving: it is not only present when the endeavor is accomplished and completed but in every step along the way.”
An educational action is thus impactful if it involves a continuous and honest confrontation between active and responsible adults—whether teachers or parents—and children: it is through this fundamental act that one can become aware of oneself.
What is the teacher’s role in this dynamic? The child is a world of experiences and feelings that are shaped through the senses; the educator will help to enhance them. With the child, she will look through the window of life, initially peering in, then gradually opening it until it is fully thrown open, allowing fresh air and scent to enter.
She will stand by him, embracing him and encouraging him to look with both eyes and heart so that everything in him is stirred by a longing for goodness; she will help him formulate questions and seek answers, give names to things, recognize beauty and kindness, and stimulate his desire for knowledge.
Caring for the child means providing continuous support, guiding him hand in hand, acting attentively and consciously, taking on his struggles, and protecting him so that the sacred within him is deeply respected.
Thanks to this encounter, the child will begin to say: “It’s beautiful,” “It’s ugly,” “Yes,” “No,” “I want,” “I don’t want,” “I can do,” “I cannot do”; the teacher will always be ready to support every step, every discovery, every attempt. All this will make education a miracle and wonder.
With this awareness, open to renewing the dynamic of the encounter—never closed in pre-established schemes, fully aware that the child is a unique, unfinished being, naturally striving to realize all aspects of the self—the teacher will never look away and will observe him along the path that can make him free, creative, curious, resourceful, autonomous, determined, tenacious, respectful, and conscious of his ‘being-with-others.’
The enthusiasm of such a lived educational relationship will not exhaust its strength: everything can be questioned, evolve, take time, only to then start anew.

The legacy and the book

Over the years, the Museum of Junk has been carefully preserved, enriched, and reorganized with passion and dedication to maintain its original complexity and to preserve the sentiment of those who conceived it. A valuable educational tool for many generations of children, today we can appreciate its beauty by exploring the contents of the fifty-four original boxes that have survived to this day, filled with hundreds of objects and documents that testify to more than a century of activity within the classrooms of the historic building on via Manzoni in Trento.
This treasure will soon find a new location, which will facilitate the consultation of documents, support study and research activities, and offer new opportunities for cultural initiatives and thematic exhibitions for those passionate about early childhood education.
The idea of creating the volume Cianfrusaglie stems from the desire to rediscover some of the fundamental childhood experiences that we carry in our hearts. Divided into thematic areas, Cianfrusaglie first retraces the developmental stages of the methods used by Rosa and Carolina Agazzi, educators from Mompiano, a neighborhood in Brescia. It continues with a selection of photographic documents related to the educational activities carried out from the 1930s at the San Martino Kindergarten in Trento. The rich central part is dedicated to the Museum of Junk, while testimonies from the educators frame the complex experiences lived. The volume concludes with the catalog of materials and documents that constitute the historical heritage of this important educational institution.