Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for one exciting ride! This Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating Amelia Earhart, an amazing aviator who broke boundaries and blazed trails! But we’re not just here to share some fun facts– we’re also here to explore what girls today can learn from her.
The March/April 2026 issue of SPIDER Magazine focuses on flight, from the history of human flight to the secrets of how birds fly. It also provides plenty of inspiration to help your daughters soar!
Amelia Earhart: The Fast Facts
Ask anyone to name a woman pilot and Amelia Earhart will likely be the first name to come to mind. She was a massive celebrity during her lifetime and remains a beloved figure today. Here are the basics that every girl should know about Amelia Earhart:
- First woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean
- First women to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
- First woman to make a solo nonstop flight across the continental USA
- First woman to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
- First person (regardless of gender) to fly from Hawaii to California
- Broke women’s altitude and speed records during her lifetime
- Co-founder and president of the International Organization of Women Pilots, aka the Ninety-Nines
- Attempted to become the first woman to fly across the entire globe, leading to her disappearance.
Amelia Earhart was an adventurous child.
Born to a prosperous family in Atchison, Kansas in 1897, young Amelia had a taste for adventure from the start. She enjoyed playing football and baseball, inventing (like creating a trap to catch the neighbors’ chickens when they escaped), reading, and collecting critters with her sister, Muriel.
Amelia and Muriel’s parents encouraged them to turn every day into an opportunity for learning and exploration. They let the girls stay up late to see a lunar eclipse or watch comets and even allowed them to build a small roller coaster in the backyard. Their mother and used cooking and other chores to teach lessons like anatomy.
When Amelia’s father, Edwin, lost his job, the family’s circumstances changed drastically. It was an unstable time for Amelia, and her parents separated and later divorced. Through it all, Amelia remained the curious, independent learner she’d always been.
As a teen, she excelled in physics and chemistry and, inspired by injured soldiers in World War I, took classes to become a nurse’s assistant. She enrolled in medical school at Columbia University– but after a year in school, something told her that maybe medicine wasn’t quite right for her.
Lessons from Amelia: Fearless women grow up experimenting.
A common theme jumps out throughout Amelia’s childhood: she was allowed to experiment and try new things. Her parents were more encouraging about taking chances than being fearful she’d hurt or embarrass herself. They allowed her to get messy and turned every day fun into a chance to learn.
While this may not sound like a big deal, the Earharts were ahead of their time. They didn’t let Amelia’s gender dictate what they thought she was capable of. Think of your fears or your expectations for your child. Could they be holding your daughter back from her true potential?
Amelia Earhart didn’t always dream of becoming a pilot.
Amelia saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair in 1907, only a few years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight. It didn’t impress her much. As she put it, “It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting.”
Her first hint of interest in flight was at a stunt flying exhibit in 1918. There, she said, “his little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.”
But her fascination with flight began in earnest when her father took her to an air show in 1920. She convinced her father to pay the $10 fee for her to ride in an airplane right there. That day was history in the making.
As she put it, “By the time I got two or three hundred feet off the ground I knew I had to fly.” So long medical school, hello flying lessons!
Lessons from Amelia: Our daughters’ paths aren’t always obvious.
Amelia grew up with a talent for science and a desire to help people, so her path to medical school seemed clear. Flight, on the other hand, came to interest her gradually.
As your daughter grows, avoid labeling her too soon and let her interests and talents speak for themselves. Maybe she shows aptitude for the violin from an early age. Resist the urge to put her in a box as a “violinist” or a “musician” and let her lead the way.
Keep exposing her to new experiences and new opportunities to try things. A kid who gets bored helping mom make cookies in kindergarten could still grow to become a famous chef. In fact, as Amelia herself once put it, “I believe that a girl should not do what she thinks she should do, but should find out through experience what she wants to do.”
Amelia Earhart wasn’t satisfied with the flight that made her a celebrity– so she did it again on her own terms.
In 1928, Amelia made history as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She was greeted with a parade on her arrival home and called “Lady Lindy,” after the famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. She even published a book about the experience.
But that wasn’t enough for her. True, she was part of the three-person flight crew, but although she had hoped to have a chance to fly the plane, she never got the opportunity to. “I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes,” she complained. She wanted to be the one in the cockpit.
What did she do? She got to work and practiced harder.
Before attempting a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, she bought a new plane and started putting in more hours. She became the first woman to fly across the continent and back and broke records for speed and altitude.
In 1932, Amelia set off across the ocean again– this time by herself. Her boundary-breaking flight from Newfoundland, Canada to Northern Ireland took 14 hours and 56 minutes.
Lessons from Amelia: Keep believing in your ability to accomplish more.
While it’s always good to celebrate achievements and milestones, girls can learn from Amelia to keep their eyes on their goals, too. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve reached the top of what you’re capable of. If you’re determined to do bigger things, keep practicing, working, and reaching for your dreams.
It once seemed impossible that a woman could fly all by herself across the Atlantic Ocean. Then there was Amelia. Now, woman pilots make transatlantic flights on commercial airlines every day. Don’t let anyone make you feel like a sack of potatoes!
To be a pilot, Amelia Earhart had to think fast and be resourceful– but also prepare.
Flying across the ocean, let alone the world, was not smooth sailing. A few hours into her solo flight across the Atlantic, her altimeter– the tool she used to tell how high she was above the ocean– stopped working. Then, the flight was knocked off-course by a storm.
Worst of all, flames began shooting from her plane’s engine. A key component called the exhaust manifold had burned out. As fuel began to dwindle, she realized the fuel gauge was leaking, too.
While she had originally planned to land in Paris, Amelia changed course. Instead, she spotted the first land she could see and followed railroad tracks from above, hoping they’d lead her to a town with an airport. When no airport could be found, she opted to land safely in a cow pasture instead.
Amelia’s final flight: a failure of communication.
Amelia wasn’t satisfied until she could achieve her ultimate goal: a flight around the world. Although she prepared for the voyage with increased fuel reserves, and better communication equipment, Amelia’s final flight proved even more challenging.
She chose an island called Howland ahead of time for a stopover and appointed an experienced navigator to join her. While the first two thirds of the journey went well, she never made it to Howland Island. The ground crew there received several difficult-to-hear messages from her that faded in and out, and Amelia, running low on fuel, couldn’t hear them either.
Amelia had removed the trailing radio antenna attached to the plane, viewing it as an unnecessarily heavy luxury. The plane still had a fixed antenna, but its range was much more limited. Unfortunately, this may have been the fatal mistake for Amelia. She and her plane were never seen again.
There were other mistakes, too: navigation errors put Amelia’s plane 12 miles west of Howland, the ground crew’s time zone was different from Amelia’s, and neither she nor her navigator knew Morse code, while the ground crew assumed they did. All in all, communication doomed the final flight.
Lessons from Amelia: Adapt with the situation– but communicate and collaborate!
There’s a lot we can learn both from Amelia’s successes and failures as a pilot. Her ability to deal with difficult, unexpected circumstances head-on is deeply admirable. If she can overcome so many mishaps, what can your daughter achieve with the right mindset?
But even though Amelia prepared for her final flight, she underestimated the importance of communication. While her independent-minded spirit is inspiring, sometimes we can’t do everything by ourselves.
In fact, Amelia’s final flight was originally supposed to have one additional crew member: a radio specialist, one who knew Morse Code. When he dropped out of the trip, Amelia didn’t find a replacement but instead took over his duties herself. We can only wonder if her flight would have gone differently if she could have focused on flying and had someone else handling communications and radio equipment.
There’s an important lesson there: asking for help is okay, teamwork helps us reach our goals, and if you do insist on doing everything by yourself, make sure you’re fully prepared!
Amelia Earhart supported other women and took inspiration from them.
As a young woman, Amelia kept a file full of newspaper clippings featuring women who accomplished important things, especially in male-dominated fields. From an early age, she looked to women for inspiration.
When she became successful, she made a point of supporting and uplifting other women. Although she was the most famous woman aviator in the world, she wasn’t the only one.
She co-founded and became the first president of an organization called the Ninety-Nines, the International Organization of Woman Pilots. To this day, their Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship Fund helps make it possible for women to receive flight training.
Amelia also taught at Purdue University, where she advised women on career opportunities, and wrote an aviation column for Cosmopolitan Magazine. She believed deeply that women could do anything men could, saying, “Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
Lessons from Amelia: Find meaningful role models– and grow up to become one.
Perhaps more than anything else, Amelia Earhart teaches girls that they can do anything that they put their minds to. Just as she looked up to boundary-breaking women in her youth, she put in the effort to train, support, and inspire others.
After reading about inspiring women in aviation in the latest issue of SPIDER Magazine, sit down with your daughter and ask her about her goals and dreams. See if you can find examples of women who have accomplished something similar.
If your daughter wants to be a veterinarian, read articles about woman veterinarians. If she wants to be an Olympic athlete, look for books about Olympians. She’ll soon see that they started as kids, just like her!
Beyond Amelia Earhart
Amelia would be the first to note that she wasn’t the only successful woman pilot. Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American woman to receive a pilot’s license, is featured in the latest issue of SPIDER Magazine.
You can learn even more about her from a featured video on Sensical’s “Spider’s Picks” playlist! (There’s an awesome video about Amelia Earhart on there, too!)
A Mighty Girl has great suggestions for children’s books about women in aviation for further reading.
And if you’re interested in learning more tips for raising curious, creative, fearless kids, sign up for our Chirp newsletter for a dose of monthly inspiration!
