Azia as Amelia

Azia has been a little obsessed with Amelia Earhart the past week and a half. She had a little research project for school where she was to pick a person to learn more about and a project to show what she learned. She picked Amelia Earhart and decided on the option where she'd dress like her and read a paragraph she'd written to the class. You can tell she has been living with Israel. She had no idea who Oprah was (the person Jenna chose) but she was really excited about a woman aviator from more than 100 years ago. 

She's been reading some of Israel's Ameila Earhart books, googling things, watching youtube clips, drawing pictures everywhere, creating dioramas and ABC books (two of the other options) and writing little lists of facts and paragraphs and stories about Amelia Earhart on little scraps of paper and leaving them all around the house. I've been collecting the written stuff as I found it laying around & tucking it in the little folder she made at school. Last night as we were finding all the pieces for her costume and getting all the things she'd written out, I told her I'd type it up if she read me the parts she wanted to read to the class. Of course Azia didn't think this was necessary. She just took the pile of papers and was just going to wad them all up and shove them in the pocket of her leather aviator jacket (which her big brother bought for her at the Folkshop for her costume for $4.95.) When I suggested that maybe wasn't the best organization system for a presentation she told me she didn't really need them anyway because she probably had a lot of it memorized.

After we started typing it she thought it was getting really long but didn't want to edit it because she thought it would be cool if it was the longest one in the class. We had to leave out some of my favorite things she'd written because (as she explained) she didn't know if they were really what happened or what people were thinking, it was just how she imagined it. And then there were just great lines like "she is rilly, rilly smart. I think she could be a teacher or nurse or even a secretarie" and "she is so brave she will have fun in heven."

Azia generally doesn't give school another thought after she leaves for the day (even when I strongly try to focus her on thinking about it) but every once in awhile she latches onto things she likes and really gets excited about learning. 

Azia's Amelia Earhart Report

Amelia Earhart was born July 24, 1897 at her grandparents’ home in Kansas. When Amelia was seven she built a roller coaster with her sister Muriel and the neighbor boy Ralphie. It was up on top of the garage and went all the way down to the ground. She said it was like flying. That was when she first wanted to fly a plane.

Amelia’s grandparents had lots of money and she and her sister Muriel moved to Iowa to live with them. Amelia was 10 years old when she saw her first plane in a grassy field at the Iowa State Fair, but she didn’t think it was interesting at all just sitting there.

When Amelia got older she decided to be a nurse and she volunteered at military hospital until  World War One ended. She went to college to be a doctor but quit after just a year and then decided to go stay with her parents in California. There at Long Beach she went on her first flight. She knew as soon as they took off she wanted to fly a plane herself. She bought a plane she named “The Canary” and started flying it.

On April 27, 1926 her life changed forever when Captain Railey called and asked her if she wanted to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She finally did it in 1928 with Wilmer Stultz and Slim Gordon. Even though she said the two men did all the real work, all the newspeople were more interested in taking pictures and talking to her since she was the first woman.  After that she started learning more and doing long flights by herself.

In 1937 she decided she’d try to fly around the world.  She left Florida and went to California, and then on to Puerto Rico, Karachi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore, Australia, and New Guinea. She was on her way to Howland Island but no one ever saw her again after that. No one knows what happened to her for sure. President Roosevelt sent nine navy ships and 66 airplanes to look for her.  The search cost over $4 million but no one ever found her.