Choose a template and draw in the stages of a butterfly's life cycle, or use the photographs in our photo-bank. If you choose the last template, label or describe what's happening.

• An egg won't turn into a chicken unless it has been fertilised by a male chicken, called a rooster.
• If you take away a chicken's egg, it will lay another one to replace it.
• Chickens don't lay eggs at night.
• The pecking order is a system chickens organise themselves into according to importance in the flock.

Use this activity to support learning about the chicken life cycle. Select the template to best meet or challenge the abilities of your children. Ask children to recall each of the stages of the chicken life cycle, find or draw an appropriate image, and write a label or description for each stage.

Facts for the teacher:

A hen lays a fertilized egg (an egg which will develop because of the action of a male chicken). The hen incubates the egg (keeps it warm) for around twenty-one days. Inside the egg, the baby chicken (embryo) slowly develops into a chick.

The chick has a little spike called an egg tooth on the end of its beak which it uses to start to break the shell. This is called pipping. It takes a few hours or sometimes up to a day for the chick to hatch. The new chick is called a hatchling.

The chick has to dry out its fluffy, yellow feathers and needs the protection of the mother hen to keep it safe and warm. It starts to eat the same things that the hen does. After a few weeks the chick starts to develop adult feathers. When they become adult, a female is called a hen and the male is called a rooster. They then join the rest of the flock.