BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
PHOTOSBY CHRIS KELLY staff Saba, a penguin from Jenkinson’s Aquarium, Point Pleasant, visited students at the Red Bank Primary School Sept. 20, during a special educational assembly. RED BANK — What’s black and white, sounds like a donkey and comes from South Africa?
The answer is Saba, an 8-year-old, African Black-Footed penguin who visited the district’s Primary School cafeteria last Monday.
Saba visited the second-graders, supervised by Sarah Faugno from the educational department of Jenkinson’s Aquarium, Point Pleasant.
Saba, on a walking tour of the classroom, delights students at the Red Bank Primary School. The five second-grade classes have been learning about penguins since the beginning of school, when they read “Three Cheers for Tacky,” a children’s book by Helen Lester, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger.
Students learned different language arts skills by reading the book, such as vocabulary, spelling and grammar, according to second-grade teacher Kimberly Repko.
They also learned about penguins, specifically where they live, what they eat and what makes them a bird.
This information helped prepare them when Faugno asked the second-graders to answer questions about Saba.
The children knew that penguins do not live anywhere above the equator, that they eat fish and that their wings, feathers and beak make them a bird, even though they cannot fly.
Repko said that these types of programs are important to helping kids retain information.
“If you make learning fun,” she said, “they don’t even know they are learning.”
The children showed what they had already learned about the birds, but learned even more from Faugno.
According to Faugno, there are seventeen different types of penguins, all too heavy to be able to fly, and that they mate for life.
“I know it sounds silly,” said Faugno, “but the best present a girl penguin can get from her boy penguin is rocks and sticks.”
These gifts can be used to build nests in which to lay their eggs. The eggs are cared for by both the mother and father penguin, each taking turns keeping the eggs warm, Faugno told the students.
Saba was allowed to walk around, though the children were instructed not to touch her because penguins can, and will, bite.