Wax Tablets

We recently read about the ancient Greeks in our history curriculum, Story of the World Volume 1. One of the things we learned was that the Greeks used wax tablets. Story of the World also has an activity guide that you can purchase with it and in it there was this simple activity to give the kids an idea of what using a wax tablet would be like. The kids thought it was fun for a few minutes.

You take any plastic lid you have available and fill it level with the sides of the lid with lard. Using a small margarine or 16 oz sour cream lid would be ideal because it's a decent size and can be thrown out when finished rather than washed. I didn't have either so I used some Tupperware lids that I had. Then you refrigerate it to somewhat harden the lard. Once it is firm, the kids can use toothpicks to write in the "wax" and butter knives to smooth it out before being used again.