■ St Joseph’s Primary School students Bridgette Bramley, Amarli Dempsey and Logan Carmichael are enjoying watching Spoonchester grow.
ROCHESTER has had a new group of residents move to town — and here's the inside scoop.
St Joseph's Primary has welcomed a tribe of decorated spoons to its campus, bringing joy to both students and staff.
St Joseph's deputy principal Jessica Carmichael said the idea for ‘Spoonchester’ came from a previous school project.
“During the first remote learning phase we created a ‘Remote Ribbon Project'. While we were learning apart we wanted to show all the students how much we missed them on site and that we were still united as a school community,” she said.
“Each ribbon had the name of every student, Little Joey (students transitioning from kindergarten to school) and staff member of the school. We wanted that sense of connection again and it was by chance that we stumbled across ‘Spoonville'.
“The fact that it was a way to help the mental health of the community during this pandemic drove us to create ‘Spoonchester’ and a slight name change allowed a greater connection to our community.”
After getting the go-ahead from school leadership, staff got to work and made the dream come alive.
“We created a town sign and ‘how to’ guides to creating their spoons — sharing this idea has been done mainly through social media and internal school systems,” Ms Carmichael said.
Since then, Spoonchester has become a fixture in the school community.
“Spoonchester is growing by the day. We have robots, superheroes, animals and many more delightful residents at the moment, but there is room for many, many more,” Ms Carmichael said.
“We have around 20 to 30 spoons at the moment and we are encouraging everyone who is involved with the school to be part of this project. We would love for every child at St Joseph's to be represented in this project.”
Ms Carmichael said it was great to see everyone getting creative during an unprecedented time.
“We loved the idea that they could be creative with this and use their imaginations. The fact that is so inclusive allows all students, families and friends to add to our growing community in Spoonchester,” she said.
If you would like to add your spoon to the village, it's easy to do.
“All you need to do is design your spoon resident and we have a box which sits outside the school gate during school hours,” she said.
“Pop the spoon in there and we will move them in the following day. Alternatively, you may enter the school grounds after hours and find a spot for your spoon to reside.”
Students also found the best products and materials to use for the designs.
“Nail polish is great to go over the top of your faces, especially on the rainy days,” Ms Carmichael said.
“Leave enough room at the bottom of your spoon resident so you can push them into the ground. You can also hot glue gun on your clothes — it can get windy out there.”