- March 6, 2025
Ormond Beach Elementary students made coral-themed dioramas, shirts and murals Friday, for its annual Arts Field Day.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Volusia County's oldest school got a facelift Friday, as Ormond Beach Elementary School students decorated an exterior wall with an under-the-sea-themed mural.
Seven third- to fifth-grade classes helped paint the mural — a tradition the school has kept going for more than a decade — and every other class in the 300-student facility participated in other coral-themed projects, like making dioramas, shirts, sun-catchers and watching movies about the ocean.
Ruth Bethea, a fourth-grade teacher, led the mural-painting with her mother, Betty Krausman, who helps every year, and art teacher Wendell Fuller.
Students got unlucky with the weather Friday, but the wall that was planned for the mural — inside the courtyard — is one of the few on campus that’s covered by an overhang. Students drew the images for the mural and teachers blew them up to be colored in.
By the project's end, Fuller, Beathea and others did their best to even out the lines of running paint. But they decided that a few smudges might actually add character.
“Years from now, we’ll know,” Beathea said. “It was raining today!”
