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Pasta Shape Match & Count Basket
Printables Basket

Pasta Shape Match & Count Basket

A printable sheet of pasta outlines and a bowl of real dry pasta. Match, sort, count, thread — a pantry activity that costs almost nothing and lasts all morning.

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Ages 2-55 min prepSave to Pinterest

Some of the best activities in our house have come out of the pantry at 7am when I had nothing planned. This is the one I go back to most.

Dry pasta is the perfect toddler material: it is cheap, it makes a lovely sound, it sorts beautifully by shape, and if a piece goes in a mouth nothing terrible happens.

The printable outlines gave it structure, and suddenly my younger one was matching shapes and counting to ten before breakfast.

Matching a real farfalle to its picture on the sheet.
Matching a real farfalle to its picture on the sheet.
Threading penne onto a shoelace, counting as they go.
Threading penne onto a shoelace, counting as they go.

What you'll need

  • The printable pasta shape sheet (download below)
  • Real dry pasta in the matching shapes: penne, farfalle, fusilli, shells, macaroni, rigatoni
  • Small bowls or a muffin tin for sorting
  • A shoelace or a piece of string with a taped end, for threading
  • Optional: a laminating pouch so the sheet survives repeated use
  • A tray with a rim to keep stray pasta contained

How to make it

  1. 1

    Print the sheet and laminate it if you can — this one gets used again and again.

  2. 2

    Tip a mixed handful of pasta into a bowl and set it beside the sheet on a tray.

  3. 3

    Invite your child to find one piece of each shape and place it beside its matching picture. Say the shape names out loud as you go.

  4. 4

    Then count: how many pieces of penne are in the bowl? Write the number in the box next to the penne, and do the same for every shape.

  5. 5

    Sort the rest of the bowl by shape into a muffin tin — quiet, satisfying work that toddlers can do for a surprisingly long time.

  6. 6

    Thread the penne and macaroni onto a shoelace to make a necklace, counting as each one goes on.

  7. 7

    Tip everything back into the bowl and keep it in the pantry — this basket is ready again in thirty seconds.

Tip

Colour the pasta if you want a sorting-by-colour version: a tablespoon of vinegar, a few drops of food colouring, shake in a bag, and dry on a tray for an hour. Keep this basket in a lidded jar in the pantry so it is genuinely a five-second setup.

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