St. Matthew’s Episcopal School students repaint their outdoor space!

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St. Matthew’s Episcopal School in Houma is embarking on an artistic journey to liven up their outdoor space and bring some color to their courtyard!

“Thomas Soudelier, our Head of School at St. Matthew’s, came to me and asked if there was anything we could do to brighten up our outdoor campus,” explained the art and P.E. teacher at St. Matthew’s, Robyn Winslow. “So I started brainstorming and asking my students for ideas, and we decided to create an obstacle course of paintings on the blacktop!” However, that is not the only idea that Winslow and her students came up with to bring some exciting change to the courtyard. “We also had some old wood that was going to be thrown away if it didn’t get used, and we wanted to use it– we can’t throw away perfectly good wood!” chuckled Winslow. “We were working on architecture in art class, so I asked the 2nd grade students to help me design some buildings that we could use to decorate our fence.” The 2nd graders decided to use the wood to paint and design a rendering of a police station, a fire station, and Terrebonne General Health System to represent local heroes; a mushroom house and a “club house” in a tree to represent imagination; the Statue of Liberty and the White House to represent America; and lastly the Great Pyramids of Giza from Egypt, the Coliseum from Rome, and the “Christ the Redeemer” statue from Rio de Janeiro to represent the world.


“It was a big undertaking– we were using outdoor materials which do not wash out easily, so we had to have some conversations about responsibility and how not to get it on our clothes,” said Winslow. “The 2nd graders did a great job and had a lot of fun painting the buildings. For the blacktop obstacle course, we had the upper grades come out on a volunteer day to help paint. The paint was donated by a local company, and lots of students and parents came together to help repaint our blacktop.” The new blacktop includes fresh lines, lily pads for students to stand on to help them space out evenly, a butterfly path for the smaller kids to help with hand-foot coordination, a compass rose in the middle pointing to north, south, east, and west, and they will eventually paint a dinosaur path and an alligator balance beam. The project will be completed with the finishing touch: painting “St. Matthew’s Episcopal School” on the compass so it can be seen from above.

Check out the photos of the progress below! For more information, please visit the St. Matthew’s Episcopal School’s Facebook, website, or email robyn.winslow@stmattshouma.org.