Phonics Museum vs. All About Reading

Teaching a child to read is the highest-stakes thing most homeschool parents do, and it usually comes first. Before the history cards, before the Latin, before any of it, there is a five-year-old and an alphabet and a parent hoping very much not to get this part wrong.

So if you have been going back and forth between Phonics Museum and All About Reading for longer than feels reasonable, that is a sign you understand what you are choosing. Both are serious phonics programs. Both work. They are built on different convictions about what these years are for, and that is what this page is about.

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

It is worth naming how much common ground there is here, because the disagreements between reading programs get loud enough that the agreements can get lost.

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, which matters more than it sounds like it does. 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, so that 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.

If you choose either one and stick with it, your child will learn to read. The question underneath this comparison is a different one.

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.

Cathy Duffy, who has reviewed both programs, notes that 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 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 the appetite is what carries them through everything that comes after. 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

	All About ReadingAll About Learning Press	Phonics MuseumVeritas Press
Approach	Orton-Gillingham; explicit, systematic, multisensory	Classical; multisensory, art- and story-driven
Scope	Pre-reading plus Levels 1 through 4 (roughly preschool through 4th-grade decoding)	Kindergarten and 1st grade, taught in sequence
Placement	Placement test; mastery-based, not grade-based	Grade-based, Kindergarten then 1st
Lesson length	About 20 minutes a day	About 20 to 30 minutes a day
Worldview	Secular and faith-neutral	Christian and classical
Handwriting	Sold separately	D’Nealian handwriting included, with letter formation instruction in the manual
Art and music	Not included	Fine art flashcards, art projects, and songs included
Digital option	Letter Tiles app ($19.99) replaces the physical tiles	Full Phonics Museum app ($9.99/mo or $99/yr, up to 3 children) can replace or supplement the kit
Cost structure	Per level; one-time purchases for tiles and review box	Per grade, or one Combo Kit covering both years
What comes after	Level 4 leads into All About Spelling	1st grade leads into First Favorites and literature study

What’s Actually in the Box

This is where most families make up their minds, so here it is concretely.

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).

Two things are worth pulling out of that. First, 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. Second, 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 permit it, and both together if they permit that.

How Each One Teaches

The signature manipulative tells you a lot about a program’s instincts.

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.

I used it for my son along with the curriculum. I didn’t do all the games in the curriculum. I mostly let him do at least one lesson in the app a day and then the workbook handwriting and reading. He also really enjoyed the coloring pages of fine art that corresponded to the lessons. Of all five of my children this was the most efficient method of teaching and learning. All kids are different though, so maybe this was just the perfect fit for him.

Stacey F., Phonics Museum Parent

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 is real 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.

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 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.

I love the readers. I can’t stand “Jack and Jill” readers as I call them. So I love that even at the earliest level they’re learning to read great, meaningful stories.

Brittany R., Phonics Museum Parent

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

All About Reading is a precise program, and the materials look like it. Color-coded tiles, a review box with dividers, flashcards filed by mastery. Everything a child touches during a lesson is a tool built to do one job, and it does that job.

The Phonics Museum materials came from someone asking a different question about what should sit in front of a five-year-old for twenty minutes a day, five days a week, for two years.

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 Percival is touring is a real one, stocked with real work. The Fine Art cards, the coloring pages keyed to each lesson, the paper dolls walking the galleries, the songs: all of it is the same museum.

Two years is a long time at that age. A child who spends them sounding out words in front of good paintings comes out able to read, and carrying something else besides, and not one hour was set aside for art appreciation to get it.

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.

My kids are older now but we used it when it was fairly new. It was a really good mix of fun and educational. I used it with three kids. One was a struggling reader, one was on target, one was a pre-reader. It worked well for each kid at their own level. It was a good review and a great introduction.

Angela R., Phonics Museum Parent

Getting Started