Parchment

Imagine you want to write a letter to a friend, but you don't have any paper. Instead of paper, you can use something called parchment. Parchment is made from animal skin, like a cow or a sheep. To make parchment, you have to clean the skin and stretch it out really flat. Then, you have to scrape off all the hair and fat until the skin is really thin and smooth. Once the skin is cleaned, it's treated with chemicals to make it last longer and not fall apart.

Now, you have parchment paper! Parchment paper was really important a long time ago because it was the only way to write things down. People used parchment to write books, letters and important documents like laws and treaties. Today, we don't use parchment as much because we have lots of other materials to write on like paper, computers and tablets. But parchment is still important for some special things like historic documents, religious texts, and fancy calligraphy!