I did an accelerated year 1 with my 8 and 6 year olds, finishing up right around Christmas. I followed it relatively closely (we leave out the Bible as we're an atheist family) while also doing a lot of TWTM things. For example, we'd read the selections from "Our Island Story" but our 'real' history was from SOTW. As we finished up year 1 and were gearing up to begin year 2 it just really stopped clicking for us. I think part of it was the selections in "This Country of Ours", which are very Christian (not that there's anything wrong with that, although it's a more than we wish to do in our household) and also pro-Columbus. I'm not a fan of Columbus and I don't want him presented as a hero to my kids. Finally, as I was reading from the Ambleside yahoo group list, it just struck me that it's not working for us. Why was I trying so hard to make it fit? I was also, unfairly, trying to use two different curriculums--a CM one and a neo-classical one. I dropped it all and kind of reassessed what I wanted to be doing, why, and how.

My 4 year old and I have started using it recently.