Paper airplanes. Magnetic soccer. A balloon on a bottle in boiling water inflates while another in ice does the opposite. It might sound like just a lot of fun, but in the 25 classrooms and among the 300 elementary students attending TCU’s first Mini-University in October, learning was the real curriculum. “We not only wanted to get these elementary students excited about math and science, we also wanted to give our pre-service education students the chance to practice their skills in a classroom,” said Janet Kelly, project director and associate professor of education. More than 30 pre-service education majors served as lead teachers and planned and developed the courses they taught in the workshops. Another 43 TCU students assisted in the classes.