We used items collected from natural areas as subject matter (twigs, rocks, shells, roots, flowers, leaves, etc.). Students selected one natural object at a time from the various trays of displayed materials. Then they placed their object on a large sheet of paper and tried to draw their object the way they saw it. It's much harder to do than it sounds, but these kids rocked the challenge and had a blast doing it. We used charcoal, pencils and pens for these drawings.
At one point, one of our second graders tried to borrow a shell from another students' paper until she realized it wasn't a shell...it was a drawing of a shell. Can't get more accurate than that!
