VISTA - You wouldn't expect to see the tide come in around Vista, but for the last few weeks at Bobier Elementary School, it's happened every day.

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Along one wing of classrooms, students have crafted a mural of a tidal zone on butcher paper. The gullies and ridges are stippled with frilly anemones and smiling octopi with Cheerios for suckers. Each day, the kids raise and lower a blue-mesh sash representing high or low tide to see what gets covered up and what gets exposed.

The mural is part of a month of activities at the campus exploring marine habitats through a program called MARE, which stands for marine activities, resources, and education.

Developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, the curriculum teaches kindergarten through fifth-grade students about five different marine habitats: pond, rocky seashore, sandy beach, kelp forest, and open ocean.

Each grade becomes the expert for one particular habitat, then teaches the other grades about it through crafts, songs, and other interactive activities. Fifty kids and parents attended a May 12 field trip to Swami's Beach in Encinitas to kick off the program.

On Thursday in Kim Jeffers' classroom, 20 first-graders wriggled impatiently in their seats for chances to see several 3-inch bamboo shrimp that Jeffers had brought in.

"We did crayfish last year, but I couldn't find any this year," said Jeffers, a serious-looking man in a Bobier Broncos T-shirt. "The kids are just learning about what things animals in the wild need to live and be happy."

One of the requirements, Jeffers told the class, was gravel. None of the kids knew what gravel was.

When he explained that it is very small rocks, the kids chorused "a ha" in unison.

Principal Kim Tullis is clearly proud of the program at Bobier.

"Half of these kids don't speak English, but by the end of the four weeks, they'll be able to name all the (marine) animals," she said.

Mixing English and Spanish, the first-graders chattered excitedly about what the shrimp were doing - hiding under their plastic-pot houses.

A bright-eyed 6-year-old named Sarai couldn't keep her hands out of the tub with her group's shrimp in it, squealing when it raced past her fingers to a new hiding place.

This is the school's third year participating in the program, which will continue through June 8.