THE 2015 season of the Little Bee Spelling Competition was formally opened earlier this month, with children’s author Kellie Magnus calling on society to find more ways to enhance learning among young children.

“The last Survery of Living Conditions showed that with regard to positive interactions at home, three out of 10 Jamaican children are not being read to and four out of 10 of them have no one playing any form of game with them,” she said referencing the 2012 edition of the survey.

“We as community members have to find other opportunities like this to reinforce their learning,” she continued.

Magnus was guest speaker at the launch, held at Guardian Life Insurance Company.

Little Bee, a project of the Kiwanis Club of New Kingston, aims to improve the spelling and literacy skills of four and five-year-old children in basic schools.

Also speaking at the launch was club president Claudette Carter, who explained that booklets containing words and picture prompts are distributed to schools for teachers to prepare the children.

“The words are selected in collaboration with the Early Childhood Unit of the Ministry of Education so that the appropriate level of difficulty is achieved. All the children in the schools can therefore benefit from the use of these booklets,” she said.

As an offshoot of the Little Bee Competition, the club, which started the competition in 2002, received sponsorship from the Jamaica Environment Trust in 2008 to purchase Jolly Phonics kits for the basic schools sponsored by the club and train their teachers in the teaching of phonics.

“This project has reaped great rewards, the least of which has been the ability of the children in the basic schools to decode words that are far above the level expected of that age cohort,” Carter said.

Prizes for the 13-year-old competition include tablets, desktop computers, bank vouchers, school supplies and books.

— Kimberley Hibbert