Here’s an easy and fun idea if you’re looking for tactile activities or sensory table ideas for your kids. Great for preschoolers and elementary school kids alike, the kids will get a big kick out of squishing tomatoes with their bare hands!
Start with a bowl full of fresh tomatoes. If you don’t have fresh ones, use canned whole tomatoes and skip straight to the crushing part!
Remove the skins. This part should be done by an adult! To get the skins off, put tomatoes into boiling water for 30 sec – 1 min, and then plunge into cold water.
Once the tomatoes are cooled, the kids can remove the skins, which will be cracked open and easily peel away. Teach a composting lesson by adding the skins to your compost!
The skinless tomatoes are ready to be crushed!
Make sure the kids have clean hands (up to their elbows!) and all jewelery is removed. Get crushing! To watch how much fun our kids had doing this, check out our tomato crushing video
Some ways you can integrate this activity into your home, daycare, or preschool activity schedule:
- Cooking – use the crushed tomatoes as part of a class cooking project (tomato sauce)
- Gardening – visit a farmers market or local garden to learn about tomatoes and then take some home with you. Teach about composting as well.
- Halloween theme – Halloween is fast approaching and we’re sure that the sticky, slimy, soggy-ness of this activity would be lots of fun as part of a halloween party! You could crush some tomatoes in advance, blindfold the kids, and have them stick their hands into the gooey bowl!