Beyond Once Upon a Time: The Impact of Children's Stories on Creativity in Early Childhood Education

This research aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 4, promoting inclusive and quality early childhood education. Its objective was to determine the effect of children’s stories on the development of creativity in four-year-old students from a public institution in Lima in 2025. A quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental design was employed, involving a sample of 32 children divided into an experimental group (15) and a control group (17). The experimental group participated in twelve storytelling and play-based sessions inspired by children’s tales, while the control group followed the traditional classroom routine. The results revealed a significant increase in creativity within the experimental group (Z = –3.655; p < 0.001), showing improvements in fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Statistically significant differences were also observed between both groups in the posttest, validating the effectiveness of the storytelling-based strategy. It is concluded that children’s stories are an effective pedagogical tool to enhance creativity from the preschool stage.