Alphabet Pasta

I was thinking to myself the other day, I wonder if you can make an alphabet completely consisting of pasta shapes? A for Angel Hair all the way to Z for Ziti? And you could do a collage for every one, making the shape of that letter out of the relevant pasta... This might be a fun thing to do for a summer school project... come up with a new pasta dish every few days using fresh seasonal produce and the shape/letter you're studying. Create three dimensional sculptures even? This could be a fun thing to do in between 1st and 2nd grade, as a kind of review without it being stodgy. Let's see how far I can get. Feel free to write in with suggestions!

A - angel hair
B -
C - cannelloni
D -
E - elbow macaroni
F - fusilli
G -
H -
I -
J -
K -
L - linguini
M - manicotti
N -
O - orzo
P -
Q -
R - rigatoni
S - spaghetti
T - tubetti
U -
V -
W -
X -
Y -
Z - ziti


There's a great pasta video you could use to introduce this (if you're into that kind of thing) from the Sesame Street video Let's Eat! Funny Food Songs (pre-Elmo, thankfully).

Maybe we'll do this next summer. That would be fun. How many days of summer do you get? I count 65 days, Monday through Friday, June through August. Take out a week or two for vacations and summer camps and you probably got yourself a program! 26 letters of the alphabet x 2 days for each = 52 days.

AHA! Goldmine. Here's the WORLD DIRECTORY OF PASTA SHAPES AND NAMES, listed in alphabetical order, no less. :-) 22 pages!

Apparently, the following do not exist: H, K, X, Y.

Maybe you could write a cutesy little poem and make a poster, like "How Kould they Xclude these letters? Y? Y? Y?"

Maybe not...
:-)