Tammy and the World Cup

This past term we spent much time on long multiplication, forming of questions and reading. Two weeks ago her mom suggested we have "Football Fridays" - the whole South Africa is preparing for the FIFA World Cup. and for a long time people have been wearing Bafana-Bafana (national soccer side of South Africa) shirts on Fridays.

We are really rugby people, so I have not paid much attention to all this, but when Tammy's mom said how much fun the school children had, I warmed to the idea, and now we're very much into the World Cup!

We learned a bit about FIFA, when and where the first World Cup was held (1930, Uruguay) and about the qualification phase and of course the final phase - now I too know why this part of the tournament is called the World Cup Finals. The most interesting part, however, was of course the different countries: 13 from Europe, 6 from Africa, 3 from North and Central America, 5 from South America, 3 from Asia and lastly Australia and New Zealand. (31 out of 204 teams qualified and South Africa is the 32nd country. We did not qualify, but may participate because we are the host country. The team has improved much, and who knows? A miracle might just happen!)

Tammy remembers all the teams fairly easily and she has no trouble pinpointing them on the world map. When she names them she cites them more or less in geographical order: France, Spain, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia. She had trouble pronouncing some of the names, but we're quite adept at breaking up words and practising them syllable by syllable until she can easily say them. The word "participate" was also a hard nut to crack, but now she says it confidently. We now work on speaking phrases fluently e.g. to say participate in and not participate.... in.... Today we spent minutes practising to say "Welcome to our....." (She had said .hmmm ...Wel.....come....to)

I am a bit afraid that my hammering on fluency, will be counterproductive - make her too anxious to speak. On the other hand, this very, very slow, clipped way of speaking with lots of throat clearing, seems to me to be a habit. If people ask her a question and she takes forever before she answers, they just assume she doesn't know or doesn't want to speak and then they talk about other things. That is why I try to get her to respond immediately.

Her mother has invited friends and cousins over for a "Football day" next Thursday - a day before the actual World Cup opening game. Tomorrow Tamerin will colour with paint as many flags as she can - there are 32 flags! These we'll use as decorations.

She will also cut out printed flags to paste onto empty pill containers. These containers will represent the different teams in their respective groups and the sizes of the containers will be an indication of the team's rating. Brazil, Spain, Portugal etc. are big containers, and New Zealand and North Korea (31st and 32ne) are very small containers. She will use these containers as part of her "World Cup Speech", when she welcomes her friends and shares her knowledge of the World Cup with them. I bet most of them won't even know where the different countries are, or what their ratings are.

We have been very busy practising questions and answers about the World Cup, e.g. "Do you know which teams from Africa will participate in the World Cup?" "Which country has been the most successful so far?" "Who do you think will win the World Cup?" She can ask me these questions correctly, but she is very slow. She has to think about every word. I do not think other people - even her family - realize just how difficult it is for her to ask a question. When she asks them a practiced question during break, they try to make normal conversation and she just clams up.

Although mastering the language has, as usual, been our main focus with this theme, it has also afforded us enough math's practice: Some of the problems she had to solve were:

• If FIFA was founded in 1930, how old is FIFA now?
• If the World Cup is held every four years, when was the last world cup?
• If there are 32 teams, and there are four teams in a group, how many groups are there?
• If 2 teams out of every group move onto the next round, how many teams will be in the next round?

The last two problems were not too diffult, as she had the pill containers ("teams") to work with as well. Tammy can do basic calculations quite well, but word calculations are tough! We have been working much on "If 1.... then 3....." (You have to multiply) and If 5.... then 1....."(you have to divide), but more on this another time.

Please God, help Tammy to master her World Cup speech in time, and help her not to become too nervous. And please God, it will do South Africa the world of good, if South Africa can at least beat Mexico in the opening game... And how about South Africa moving onto the next round?... Please?