Our Hatching Calendar: The Life Cycle of a Baby Chick

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Our Hatching Calendar: The Life Cycle of a Baby Chick is a 1-page printable to take your students through the 21 day life cycle of a baby chick gearing up to hatch! The description for each day is simple and concise. A picture of the baby chick inside the egg is included for every 5 days so that students can really get a visual for how the baby chick is growing. They will color in their square for each passing day! This hatching calendar would be especially ideal if your students are following the journey of a live baby chick about to hatch.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Follow the twenty-one day development of a chick embryo in order, naming what changes at each stage
Track elapsed days against a real start date, colouring one square per day
Name the visible milestones of development — heartbeat, beak, scales and claws, down, egg tooth — in the sequence they occur
Anticipate hatching from the signs the calendar names, such as the beak turning to the air space and the first cracks

Teaching tips

Fill in the "Day 1 is on" line as the eggs go into the incubator; every square after it is counted from that date
One square coloured at the same point each morning turns the calendar into a daily routine rather than a one-off worksheet
The two candling squares are the natural moments to gather the class around a light and look at an egg, since the calendar names the step without explaining it
Read the final week's squares ahead of time; day eighteen tells children to start watching for cracks, and knowing that in advance keeps the last days calm
Print one for the classroom wall and smaller copies for individual children if you want both a shared countdown and a personal record

Skills covered

Life cycle sequencing — children follow embryonic development in order across twenty-one days, from a beating heart to a chick ready to hatch.
Calendar tracking — a square is coloured for each day that passes, counting forward from a start date written on the sheet.
Science vocabulary — the squares introduce terms such as egg tooth, down, scales and claws, and air space in the context of what is happening that day.
Observation and anticipation — the candling squares and the watch-for-cracks note connect the printed calendar to what children can actually see in the incubator.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What are the "Candle Eggs" squares for?

Two of the twenty-one squares carry that note, marking the days set aside for candling — holding a light behind an egg to see how the embryo is developing. The calendar names the step and its timing; it does not give instructions for doing it, so plan the light source yourself.

How is the calendar started?

A line at the top reads "Day 1 is on ________________", filled in with the date the eggs go into the incubator. From there each square is coloured on its day, so the printed twenty-one day sequence lines up with the real dates of the class's hatch.

What do the last few squares tell children to look for?

The beak turns to the air space, then day eighteen says to start watching for signs of cracks, day nineteen notes that the yolk enters the embryo's body and the embryo almost fills the shell, and day twenty-one is marked Hatching Day.