The Earhart children seemed to have a spirit of adventure and would set off daily to explore their neighbourhood. As a child, Amelia Earhart spent hours playing with sister "Pidge", climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle, and sledding downhill.
Some biographers have characterized the young Amelia as a tomboy. The girls kept worms, moths, katydids and a tree toad they gathered in a growing collection. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, 'Amelia Earhart'constructed a home-made ramp that was fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, and secured it to the roof of the family tool shed.
Following Amelia's well-documented first flight, she emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, a torn dress and a "sensation of exhilaration", saying: "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!" In 1907, Edwin Earhart's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa.
The next year, at the age of 10, Amelia saw her first aircraft at Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Their father tried to interest his daughters in taking a flight but after looking at the rickety "flivver", Amelia promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round. She later described the biplane as "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting"