The pupils of St Chad’s Primary School in Stoke Lodge went back to the Stone Age with a school-wide adventure during May.
Amongst many other lovely items on in the school grounds, the wooden pagoda which stands facing the main entrance gets a lot of attention. The school has been looking at ways to create a mud-free path around the outside of the hexagonal shaped building because as well as being a place that pupils enjoy sitting in the shade, chatting with friends and just relaxing. It is also a very popular ‘tag base’ which means that you will often see pupils chasing each other around its sides. The outcome of this has been, of course, that the grass wears away quickly and although the school wants the pupils to have fun, this is not so much fun in the rainy wintertime. The Friends of of St Chad’s proposed creating a stone walkway around the school’s pagoda and this idea evolved into creating a ‘memory path’.
Each pupil was given a stone pebble to take home and decorate in a way that they felt symbolised themselves and symbolised what the school stood for. When they were returned, there were designs from the simple to the extremely complex, but each representing one pupil in St Chad’s school. Mr D Lippiatt, a parent of two children at the school and the owner of D J Lippiatt Carpenters and Builders took home the nearly 300 stones and varnished each one by hand.
After digging out and laying the groundwork, the pupils were treated, a class at a time, to coming and setting their stone into the wet concrete.
The path is now set and waiting to cure, and after one last varnish, there will be a small piece of everyone currently in St Chad’s Primary School for many years to come.
