CHAMPAIGN — They're a long way from the ocean, but students in Diana Boyd's enrichment classes at Champaign's Kenwood Elementary are sure excited about coral.

They're studying it and trying to raise money to adopt some corals of their own to save through The Coral Restoration Foundation in Florida.

The students learned about coral by touching samples, using the computer lab and even making their own corals with marshmallows, almond bark, sprinkles and Twizzlers. Boyd said she even has a coral game to help students learn.

During a recent class, students drew posters and murals to put around the school to inform their classmates and teachers.

Fatima Razack, who's 8, said she's learned a lot about corals during the unit.

"I'm kind of getting to know them a bit more," she said, as she colored her poster. On it, fish talked in conversation bubbles, saying "Why not save the corals?" and "They're a habitat for me, too."

Across the room, several boys worked on a mural depicting the Titanic, the iceberg that caused it to sink and of course, corals growing underneath.

Harley McNattin, who's 8, also drew on it a diver wearing an "I heart corals" shirt. He said he's learned about sea urchins that help protect corals and fish that live within them. He said his class also learned about algae that grows on corals and is bad for it.

"Fish live inside it and eat the algae off the coral," McNattin said. He said it's important to protect coral because "if you don't, they will die and the coral reefs won't have coral, and it won't look good because (coral) makes it pop."

Actually, there are many more good reasons to preserve coral reefs, said Ken Nedimyer, founder and president of The Coral Restoration Foundation. A friend of Boyd's, Nedimyer said it's important for people all over the country, not just near the ocean, to remember the importance of coral.

"I think it's important for kids in general to be aware of the ocean, about any natural resource," he said.

Plus, he called the issues facing coral reefs "worldwide problems."

He said coral, especially in the Caribbean, is stressed.

That's caused by poor water quality and inadequately treated sewage, bacterial blooms growing on and infecting the coral and overfishing.

"All the predators have been fished out of the reefs," Nedimyer said. "Removing all those animals has a big impact on the functioning of a reef."

Even hurricanes can damage coral reefs, he said, and as a result, corals are spread throughout the ocean and aren't close enough to reproduce.

His foundation now has the largest coral nursery in the Western Hemisphere. It uses a research permit from the National Marine Sanctuary Program to grow staghorn and elkhorn corals. They are both endangered.

How they do it: They break the corals into 2-inch pieces and mount them to a labeled disc with epoxy. Or, they hang the fragment on a wire and hang it on a sort of underwater clothesline at one if its underwater nurseries.

Nedimyer compared the process to houseplants — a cutting grows into its own coral, and pruning corals make them grow faster.

"It responds really well," Nedimyer said, and grows so quickly that within six months to a year, it's ready to join a coral reef. Divers epoxy the nursery-grown corals to a reef, and "within a year, you can't even tell where it was planting," and within two years, it's usually reproducing, he said.

It's such an easy process that recreation divers volunteer for the foundation, and Nedimyer said he's hoping the foundation can revitalize reefs throughout the Caribbean.

And if the Kenwood students have anything to do with it, people all over Champaign-Urbana are going to know about the foundation's efforts.

It's important "so they can live and aren't extinct," said 8-year-old Taylor Corum, "and so the fish have someplace to live."