Look Deeply!

Discover patterns! 

Crack codes!

Get skills!

Unbox Beautiful Discovery monthly! Get skills while decoding awesome natural patterns. 

A beautiful way to learn. 

Learn to decode and model nature's patterns with art, colorful tiles, sprites, origami, code, and natural wonders. 

Each monthly box engages your senses with a vivid intersection of art, science, math, technology and nature.

"I love the Beautiful Discovery boxes. My middle and high school children have loved exploring each box ...  Thank you for perfectly themed and curated boxes!" 

Alice P. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Simplicity of Symmetry:

Regular Polyhedra & logarithmic spirals

In this box, you explore elegant symmetrical patterns that are constructed with simple rules, including the five symmetrical 3D objects (“Platonic solids”). All five of these shapes are found in mineral crystals, a few of which we include in the box. Also enclosed is a fluorite octahedron, and accompanying drawing exercise demonstrates the role of looking deeply in art and science.

We explore another kind of symmetry that is even more common in nature: symmetry across scales, large and small. An example is a logarithmic spiral. The first kind of logarithmic spiral we build out of squares (enclosed). Then, we use code to make smooth logarithmic spirals. The included Ammonite fossil is a logarithmic spiral. We see this spiral in many natural forms. Branching trees also have symmetry across scales. Sometimes these patterns seem complex, but they arise from repeating the same simple rule, like turning or splitting into two while getting slightly smaller or larger each time. Our webpages include models of all these patterns 

Frozen Fractals

Explore fractal patterns of snowflakes, frost fern and crystals. Draw those patterns on a scratch board. Model them with simple drag and drop blocks. Make snowy frost fern salt crystals in minutes. Look deeply at nature's fractals. Examine the simple rules that give rise to frozen fractals and similar life patterns, like trees and ferns. See that pattern on the included snowflake obsidian. All needed materials included.

Secret Code of Flowers:

Golden Ratio Spirals

Be dazzled! Explore the hypnotic beauty of nature’s spirals! We include natural treasures—pinecones, sea shells, and daisies. 

Get creative! The art activities, easy online computer models, and spiral coloring book give you the opportunity to express your artistic side while learning about floral spirals and the mathematics involved in this natural organizational pattern. 

Through our movies and instructional booklets that present these complex concepts in a concise and relatable fashion, you will learn about the Golden Angle, irrational numbers, and why the arms of floral spirals are Fibonacci numbers.

deCODING 3D & perspective

With 3D glasses, VR (virtual reality) glasses, and 3D modeling tools, you learn about perspective drawing, parallax and other 3D mechanisms. Comes with 3D slides, drawing exercises, code and bonus interactive 3D images online with your phone. You go beyond the three dimensions, adding three color dimensions, learning how computers generate shades of colors. 

Grazers & Hunters

Art & Science of Predator-Prey Ecosystems

Look deeply at the beautiful patterns of elk and wolves, with art and science. Draw the fur patterns with pastels. Get a feel for the ecosystem with a dynamic game, where you try to gain the most elk and grass through strategic grazing and hunting. The beautiful cardboard game has a code version, which is a model of a predator-prey ecosystem. Start with easy drag and drop code, and move onto analysis.

Parabolas & Paraboloids

The parabola is a pattern hidden throughout nature. Get an intuitive feel for this by making 3D models of parabolas and paraboloids using origami, stick frames, and cones,  Also includes science booklet and drag and drop code showing how parabolas emerge from simple rules in nature. See the paraboloid in architecture. Make beautiful paraboloid art.  

deCODING Spots & Stripes

With art and code, explore simple models generating diverse patterns on animal fur, feathers, and flocks.  Learn techniques of painting and sketching with art projects celebrating the patterns. Includes models, real feather, transparent grid, paint, canvas, dye, dish and glue. Paint a closeup of a snowy owl, and use code to model of flock. For fun we model an owl flock from Harry Potter.  

Monkey See Monkey Do: 

DeCODING Peer Pressure

When a Vervet monkey sees several others eating a blue berry, he tends to eat blue berries. If the monkey moves to a new group where they eat pink berries, the Vervets will eat pink berries. We use simple Scratch code to model this "monkey see monkey do" behavior. We also explore the beauty of the Vervets and their berries with a drawing projects. We'll also paint a blueberry using blueberry pastes prepared as acid and base mixtures.

Pendulums and Music of the Spheres

Find out what orbits in our solar system have in common with music. This box includes harmonic motion pendulums, paint for a glow in the dark Mimas moon, a pendulum that glows its oscillations, code, pan pipes that illustrate mathematics of music. As in music, the solar system orbits show ratios of two to one, three to two and four to three.

Decoding Nature's Broken Symmetries

From flowers to crystals to atomic particles, nature abounds with broken symmetries. Play with floral shapes, making 3D models with broken symmetry, the Trillium flower, the hexagonal Mountain Laurel. Included is a pyritohedral piece of iron pyrite and a large model of the pyritohedron (a dodecahedron with some symmetry broken). See how reducing symmetry opens up new practical possibilities and new beauty

Decoding Bubbles and Bees

Discover why bees make hexagons. By making containers, explore why hexagons are the most efficient use of material. See soap bubbles form hexagons when packed. With a wax resist drawing of a honeycomb, celebrate the beautify of beehives and explore the hydrophobic nature of wax. Comes with wasp nest sample, and sheet

Barely Balanced:

Decoding Ecosystems

This board game is a barely balanced ecosystem. Try to tip it in your favor. Includes a microbial version of the ecosystem. Immerse yourself in these competitive worlds. Comes with an easy code version of the game, instructional movies, online computer models, art activities.

Decoding Clustering in Shells & Crabs

Birds of a feather flocking together, a kind of segregation, generates patterns of spots and patches. Fiddler crabs flock in this way, for example. More complex patterns of spots and stripes occur on the surface of shells. This box explores these patterns with crabs, shells, and a game model of segregation.  

Decode Lizards & Shells

A pattern of lizard tiles dazzles the eye, lizards compete for territory in a computer model, Mountainkin challenge each other for dominance. We engage the senses by including items, like origami, that are visually and texturally engaging. The seashells in this box have a fascinating pattern that you can recreate with our simple worksheet. That leads into simple coding with which you can create these fascinating patterns with a computer.

This box introduces pattern discovery, decoding, and modeling. Explore tiling patterns on lizards, quartz crystals and origami, not only by appreciating their innate beauty, but with art, science, and math. 

Code included in each box

For each box, we provide colorful drag and drop code for the natural patterns explored that month, like floral spirals, spots and stripes, scales, tilings, shell patterns, music of the spheres. 

Each ecogame has a beautiful cardboard version and a colorful drag and drop code version. This cardboard to code method makes coding visual, tangible, and kinesthetic.

New: subscriptions now come with 30+ bonus videos supporting box content.