How about volunteering to be a parent mentor for a once a week after school club/group in an area your ds or dd is interested in? It would be a way to gather in one spot kids with a shared interest, and probably meet their parents when the kids get picked up. Parents are thrilled if another one wants to provide an activity that lets them pick up from school a half hour later, and will start out liking you just for that.
Bright 8-10 year olds love to do stuff so you don't have to have a special talent. Build a robot from a kit, use a kit to start a worm composter at school, shoot rockets up off the school playing field, or if all that sounds intimidating how about a classic cartoon history/video club through the winter (all you have to do is rent the videos and supply popcorn). If more outdoor interests maybe a frisbee golf club, GPS/compass treasure hunt club. Whatever your kids are interested in and you have time for. You can ask the school for a teacher to mentor you to get started, even come to the first one or two to lead you through how to do it and get it going smoothly, and put a cap on the number of kids so it's not a stressful number. Just commit to 4 weeks or so to start and see how it goes, if it flounders just pick some other topic. If weekdays are a problem try a club meeting Saturdays.
My DS5 has been going to a club on one Saturday a month run by a parent. The parents stick around usually in the background chatting, or sometimes groups of 2 or 3 kids are brought by one parent. DS has had the best time there, we've hung out for an hour or more afterwards sometimes while he's played with kids 2-3 years older and he's gotten along so well with them -- it shocks me what good social skills he's capable of having when there's a shared interest. The kids seem to be nicer to him (more inclusive) outside of school than they would be during the day when they have their regular friends, I'm sure they would completely ignore him if he was in their class. I think DS makes more of an effort too because he admires them a bit for being older. I only wish it was more than once a month. I'm hoping after a few more of those that if we suggest a playdate with one of these older boys it won't seem odd that the ages are so different.
Polly
