If you've been going back and forth between Phonics Museum and All About Reading, this page will get you to a decision.

Below you'll find what comes in each box, what each one actually costs once you add the pieces sold separately, how a lesson runs, and the difference that decides it for most families. All About Reading is built to answer, "What does this child need next?" Phonics Museum is built to answer, "What will make this child love reading?"

Nearly everything else follows from that.

Still working out what you need? Our guide to choosing a homeschool phonics curriculum covers the seven questions that narrow the field, with a chart comparing five programs side by side.

At a Glance

What These Two Programs Agree On

Both of these are explicit, systematic phonics.

Children are taught the sounds letters make, in a deliberate order, and then taught to blend those sounds into words. Neither program asks a child to guess a word from the picture or the shape or the first letter. That sounds obvious. It has not always been the consensus, and the argument over it has run for seventy years, from Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read (1955) through the National Reading Panel's report in 2000, which found systematic phonics instruction to be significantly more effective than the alternatives. Both Phonics Museum and All About Reading land on the same side of that question.

Both are multisensory.

Children move things with their hands, hear sounds, say sounds, and see letters, all in the same lesson, because young children learn with their whole bodies.

Both are scripted.

Neither program expects you to arrive already knowing how to teach reading. The manual tells you what to say.

And both give children real decodable text early.

That means a child who has learned six sounds gets to read something using those six sounds that same week. The moment a child reads a sentence themselves for the first time is the moment the whole thing becomes real to them, and both programs are engineered to get there fast.

Two Different Questions

Every curriculum is built to answer a question, and you can usually work out which question by looking at what the program organizes itself around.

The museum theme, the history topics in the primers, and the integration of fine art make Phonics Museum particularly well suited to families pursuing a classical education. That is the design working as intended.

We built Phonics Museum around the second question (What will make this child reading?) because of what we think is at stake in these two years. A child who learns to decode has gained a skill. A child who learns that books are where the good things are has gained an appetite, and that appetite will carry them through everything that comes next. Both programs will teach a child to read. We built ours to send a reader into the rest of their education wanting more.

Program Structure

What's in the Box

All About Reading Level 1 Materials ($159.95) includes the Teacher's Manual, the Student Packet (activity book, flashcards, viewfinder bookmark, stickers), and three full-color hardcover readers. You will also need the Review Box ($17.95) for organizing flashcards and the Letter Tiles ($25.95). The tiles are a one-time purchase per household and carry across every level of both All About Reading and All About Spelling, which is a sensible piece of design. The readers and manual are non-consumable, so a second child needs only a new Student Packet and Review Box. All in, Level 1 runs $203.85.

The Phonics Museum Kindergarten Kit ($190) includes the scripted Teacher's Manual, the full-color Workbook, alphabet flashcards using fine art, alphabet playing cards, Fine Art cards, the pop-up art museum game board, game cards and playing pieces, the Alphabet Quest introductory book, a Museum Bag decal, ten primers, fifty puzzle pieces, paper dolls, and downloadable songs. The First Grade Kit ($190) carries the same architecture forward with twenty more primers, word flashcards, and the addition of copywork, spelling, and reading comprehension. The Combo Kit ($250) is both years together, and additional students need only an Individual Student Kit ($45 without primers, $70 to $85 with them).

Additionally, D'Nealian handwriting is built into the Phonics Museum workbook, with letter formation instructions in the manual, so it is not a separate purchase or a separate part of your morning. Furthermore, the songs, the games, and the art projects are in the box rather than sold as supplements.

What It Costs

For the two years both programs cover, Phonics Museum costs less and puts more in the box, and the included app year widens the gap.

Bought on its own, the app is $9.99 a month or $99 a year, covers up to three children on one account, and includes over 900 games, videos, songs, and early readers, with a two-week free trial. It works alone or alongside the kit. We recommend the app if your circumstances require it, and both together if they permit that.

How Each One Teaches

The signature manipulative tells you a lot about a program's methods and goals.

All About Reading's is the letter tile: color-coded, magnetic, arranged on a board so a child can build a word, break it apart, and swap one sound for another. It is a precise tool. A parent can show a child exactly what changed between sat and sit by moving one tile. That precision is the point, and it is why the tiles carry through every level of both the reading and spelling programs.

Phonics Museum's is the puzzle piece. Phonograms are printed on interlocking pieces, so when a child joins ow to gl the pieces physically click. The child feels the sounds combine. It is a small difference and a real one: a tile sits next to another tile, and a puzzle piece commits.

The rest of a Phonics Museum lesson tends to move around the table. There are songs to sing, a museum board to play on, primers to read, a workbook page with handwriting, and art to look at.

An All About Reading lesson is tighter and more uniform: review the flashcards, teach the new concept with the tiles, work the activity book page, read from the reader. About twenty minutes. There's definitely value in that consistency, particularly for a parent teaching several children in a morning who needs to know exactly what the next block requires.

About the Primers

The readers are where these two programs feel most different.

Percival's Tours: the Phonics Museum primers

The earliest Phonics Museum primers are simple, and they have to be. A child six weeks into the alphabet can decode Mim and Tim sit for a bit, and asking for more than that would mean handing them a book they cannot actually read. Every well-built phonics program starts here.

What changes is where they go. The primers are framed as Percival's tours, and as the phonograms accumulate, the subject matter opens up further into art, history, and real stories. By 1st grade, children are reading about things worth reading about, which is the point of learning to decode in the first place.

All About Reading's readers are well made, full-color hardcovers with characters children get attached to, and they are carefully engineered so that a child only encounters patterns already taught. That engineering is a strength. It also means the stories exist primarily to serve the sequence.

Where the Art Actually Matters

The fine art in Phonics Museum is not a border around the worksheet.

The alphabet flashcards are paintings. A child learning the letter A is looking at a still life of apples by an actual painter. The workbook covers frame Van Gogh's sunflowers and the Mona Lisa because the museum the children are touring is a real one, stocked with real work. The Fine Art cards, the coloring pages that correspond to each lesson, the songs, the paper dolls walking the galleries: all of it is the same museum.

What this buys you is that a child finishes 1st grade able to read and also having spent two years looking closely at good paintings and listening to good music, without a single hour set aside for art appreciation. For families who care about beauty as part of an education rather than an elective within it, that integration is the entire point.

Which Program Fits Your Family?

The Orton-Gillingham foundation and the mastery-based placement in All About Reading are built precisely for the child who needs to be met exactly where they are, and the program has earned its reputation there.

Choose Phonics Museum, too, if you are teaching several children at once and they are not in the same place.

Getting Started