Reading a frozen snapshot of the extraction artefacts, taken 2026-08-15 07:05 UTC at commit e96504e — 288 files. Figures are recounted from that snapshot, not from a live pipeline.
The Work Record

The method

computed, not stored

Five witnesses, one catalogue, every ordering weighted by how many of them assert it. This page holds no consensus artefact: the crosswalk on disk records only which entries are the same physical object, and everything else here is derived each time the page renders from that plus the gated testimony.

what kind of thing this order is — in Montessori’s own words

“The order which I have given refers to the degree of ease with which the child performs the exercises.”
no printed folio · leaf 56Handbook, 1914

Read the spine below as that: a gradient of ease, not a curriculum.

234
canonical materials
from 292 witness entries
30
merged across books
3 attested by all five
22
ordered by someone
212 on the shelf, unordered
17
orderings
each resolving to a sentence
0
asserted by >1 witness
see the finding below
47
seen in a plate
image-anchored

The witnesses agree on the catalogue and on nothing about order.

30 materials were merged across books and 3 are named by all five. But not one ordering is asserted by more than one witness. Five canonical materials are ordered by more than one book — Pink Tower, Broad Stair, Plane Geometric Insets, Metal Insets, Rough and Smooth Board — and never in the same pairing. Fisher puts the Pink Tower before the Broad Stair; the Handbook puts the Cylinder Blocks before each of them separately.

This is shown rather than smoothed because it is the measurement. Every edge below therefore carries exactly one witness, and no amount of weighting will make it carry more.

Boxes of Fabrics → Colour Boxes — one witnessBroad Stair → Long Stair — one witnessDressing Frames → Pink Tower — one witnessMetal Insets → Colored Crayons — one witnessMusical Bells → Musical Note Discs — one witnessPink Tower → Long Stair — one witnessPink Tower → Broad Stair — one witnessPlane Geometric Insets → Geometric Cards — one witnessPlane Geometric Insets → Pink Tower — one witnessPlane Geometrical Insets → Metal Insets — one witnessRough and Smooth Board → Touch Board with Graduated Strips — one witnessRough and Smooth Boards → Sandpaper Letters — one witnessSandpaper Board No. 1 → Sandpaper Board No. 2 — one witnessSandpaper Boards → Sandpaper Board No. 2 — one witnessSolid Insets → Broad Stair — one witnessSolid Insets → Pink Tower — one witnessSolid Insets → Sensorial Rods — one witnessBoxes of Fabrics●Boxes of Fabrics — attested by 1Dressing Frames●●●●Dressing Frames — attested by 4Musical Bells●●Musical Bells — attested by 2Plane Geometric Insets●Plane Geometric Insets — attested by 1Plane Geometrical Ins…●Plane Geometrical Insets — attested by 1Rough and Smooth Board●Rough and Smooth Board — attested by 1Rough and Smooth Boar…●Rough and Smooth Boards — attested by 1Sandpaper Board No. 1●Sandpaper Board No. 1 — attested by 1Sandpaper Boards●Sandpaper Boards — attested by 1Solid Insets●Solid Insets — attested by 1Colour Boxes●Colour Boxes — attested by 1Geometric Cards●●Geometric Cards — attested by 2Metal Insets●●●●●Metal Insets — attested by 5Musical Note Discs●Musical Note Discs — attested by 1Pink Tower●●●●●Pink Tower — attested by 5Sandpaper Board No. 2●Sandpaper Board No. 2 — attested by 1Sandpaper Letters●●●●Sandpaper Letters — attested by 4Sensorial Rods●Sensorial Rods — attested by 1Touch Board with Grad…●Touch Board with Graduated Strips — attested by 1Broad Stair●●●●Broad Stair — attested by 4Colored Crayons●Colored Crayons — attested by 1Long Stair●Long Stair — attested by 1

● per witness attesting the material. Line weight = witnesses asserting the ordering (currently all one). Dashed = one reading arm asserted and the other, on the same pages, did not. Click any node or edge for the testimony underneath it.

Where each witness hands the order away

Every witness that speaks to order declares, in its own words, that the order is not the book’s to fix. Montessori names the child herself, in the Advanced volume — and Stevens, reading her, reaches the same answer. The others hand it to the teacher and the mother. Nobody keeps it.

Advanced

Maria Montessori, 1917 · primary

authority: the child

“The external material is then offered, and left freely to the natural individual energies of the children.”
no printed folio · leaf 103released
“Although normally drawing comes after the sensory exercises, he was left at liberty to do what he wished;”
no printed folio · leaf 112released
“The children are free to choose the exercises they prefer; but of course, as the teacher initiates them in each exercise, they only choose the objects they know how to use.”
no printed folio · leaf 119mixed

Stevens

Ellen Yale Stevens, 1913 · secondary-interpreter

authority: the child

“For the order in which these have been taken up in this chapter is not one that is necessary to follow in practice with the children.”
p. 127 · leaf 151folio read from leafreleased

Handbook

Maria Montessori, 1914 · primary

authority: the book, the teacher

“The order which I have given refers to the degree of ease with which the child performs the exercises.”
no printed folio · leaf 56mixed
“The teacher may select according to her own judgment certain forms from among the whole series at her disposal.”
no printed folio · leaf 83mixed

Fisher

Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 1913 · secondary-interpreter

authority: the mother

“Order of Exercises to Be Modified According to Circumstances.”
p. 46 · leaf 72released
“The order of exercises as hereafter indicated is to be followed with any ordinary child, but this must be modified according to circumstances.”
p. 47 · leaf 73mixed

Elementary

Maria Montessori, 1917 · primary

authority: —

No order-authority declaration in this volume survives the relevance gate. Shown rather than hidden: the absence is part of the record.

The shelf (212 canonical materials no witness orders)

Most of the catalogue is here. These materials are named, merged where the books agree they are the same object, and placed in no sequence by anyone — which is the honest state of the evidence, not a gap to be filled in.