Exploration of Elementary School Students' Imagination Through Children's Stories: Creative Thinking Strategies

This study aims to explore how children's stories can influence and improve the creative thinking skills of elementary school students in Indonesia. Imagination as part of the creative thinking process plays a role in developing students' skills. This study uses a case study method with a qualitative approach. Data was collected through open interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations, and analysis of students' creative works after the children's stories were read. The research participants were grade 5 students in one of the elementary schools in Kuningan Regency, West Java, Indonesia. The research activities involved students in rewriting stories with additional imagination, and students' written works were analyzed based on indicators of originality, complexity, and depth of ideas. The results of the study show that writing a retelling based on children's stories can stimulate students' imagination and creativity, which can be seen from the improvement in narrative structure, vocabulary use, and theme development. This research successfully explored how children's stories can influence and improve the creative thinking skills of elementary school students. The findings show that through children's stories, students are not only able to expand their imagination, but also increase the originality, complexity, and depth of ideas in their written work. These results provide an in-depth understanding of the important role of children's stories in stimulating students' creativity, as well as offering valuable insights for curriculum development that support the development of creative thinking skills from an early age.