Your entire body is made up of tiny cells. These cells need to make more cells, so that your body can grow bigger and stronger. Cells use a process called mitosis to make more of themselves.

These cells can make more cells just like them using mitosis!

Mitosis is simple: A cell simply duplicates all of it's parts and creates another cell that's exactly the same. Basically, the cell is making a copy of itself.

A cell has five stages of life. These stages repeat themselves as a cycle, over and over again until the cell dies. Four of the stages are part of mitosis.

These are the five stages of a cell's life.

Interphase is the first stage of a cell's life. Interphase isn't part of mitosis. Instead, it's the stage where the cell lives most of it's life. Cells don't spend very much time in mitosis.

Prophase is the first stage of mitosis. When a cell decides to divide, it has to get ready first. Because the cell is making a copy of itself, first it has to make copies of all it's parts. Cells have tiny organs called "organelles" which act a lot like our organs - they help the cell live. The cell has to make copies of all it's organelles, as well as it's DNA.

The DNA is a set of instructions thaat every cell has, that tell the cells what to do. Every cell in your body has the exact same DNA! This is because, when a cell divides, it makes an exact copy of it's DNA.

Metaphase is the second stage of mitosis. In this stage, the cell lines up all it's parts to split in half. The DNA makes a big line across the middle of the cell. Two centrioles line up on opposite ends of the cell, perpindicular to the line of DNA. From each centriole come a bunch of tubes, which attach to the DNA. 

The third stage of mitosis is Anaphase. Here, the cell finally begins to split in half. The tubes connected to the DNA pull it apart, so that half the DNA goes to one side and half of it goes to the other side.

The last stage of mitosis is called Telophase. Here, the division of the two cells finishes. The cells slowly pull apart, splitting the original cell into two pieces. Each cell is exactly the same as the orginal cell, since both are exact copies of it.

There you have it! Mitosis lets cells make many copies of each other - the more cells there are, the more cells get made. Some cells divide much faster than others, and some never get to divide at all. One thing's for sure: Without mitosis, we wouldn't be able to make any new cells!