We have done this World Cup Flag activity many times in our house and run a sweep along side it. It is really a fun activity for the whole family. The buy in for the sweep is that you have to colour in at least one flag, but once they start colouring in most of the kids will do more than one – me included!
The youngest now has an impressive knowledge of flags of the world – better than mine as he is usually the one who who colours in the most flags.
This post is up a bit late as the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019 has already started, but better late than never! To be honest, I didn’t realise the Women’s World Cup was on until about a week before it started – mainly because it doesn’t receive even half the media attention the men’s does. So I felt that even though this was late, I still wanted to show my support and interest in the event. You can find a full list of the games here.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup operates slightly differently to the mens. The six group format of the women’s tournament means the top two sides in each group go through to the round of 16, where they are joined by the four best performed third-placed sides in the group stage.
Our Women’s World Cup Sweep 2019
To run our sweep this is what we do:
- Print out the flags of all participating countries. Have the kids colour the flags in the right colours.
- We set them up in 6 groups of 4 flags. All flags will remain on the cupboards until the end of the group stage.
- Once we know which countries didn’t make it through to the round of 16, we will take their flags down.
- The teams that are eliminated in the knock out stage are then removed and we will be left with only 8 flags.
- At the end of the quarter finals another 4 will be removed.
- Then after the semi- finals it will be down to the last two, then of course only the winner is remaining.
Once we have set the draw up in the kitchen, we then write the names of all the teams and sort them into groups based on their likely hood to make it through to the finals (we used the odds from this page to help us work this out). We all then are allocated a number of teams for the World Cup, receiving a mix of teams with a decent chance and those who are unlikely to make it past the group stage. For the Women’s World Cup it worked out best to divide by six, so Phil and I are together.
As the stages of the FIFA World Cup progresses, we take down the flags of the countries which are knocked out. So we start with 24 flags on our kitchen cupboards, then 16, then 8, then 4, then 2 and finally 1 once the FIFA World Cup Final has been played.
We have a prize for the people who have the teams that make it to the FIFA World Cup Final. The person who has the winner of the World Cup is allowed to choose a family take away meal. The person who has the team which lost in the final is allowed to choose the dessert and the person who has the third placed side chooses the drink. Simple but fun!
FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019 – Printable Flags
The table below has all the teams in the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019 set out in their groups. You can click on the links and go through to a picture of that country’s flag, which you can print out and colour in.
| GROUP A | GROUP B | GROUP C |
| France Norway Nigeria Korea Republic | Germany Spain China PR South Africa | Brazil Italy Australia Jamaica |
| GROUP D | GROUP E | GROUP G |
| England Argentina Japan Scotland | Canada Netherlands New Zealand Cameroon | USA Sweden Chile Thailand |
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At the time of writing the Maltildas have one loss and one win. They are playing Jamaica next Wednesday 19 June 5am (AEST) and you can watch it on SBS – GO MALTILDAS!!!