<![CDATA[Mathematical thinking in early childhood is not merely the ability to recognize numbers, but a process of understanding relationships, patterns, and structures within everyday experience. This article reports a preliminary study aimed at identifying early indications of the emergence of young children's mathematical thinking during storytelling activities at TK Dharma Wanita, Bengkulu City, a kindergarten with a routine storytelling program called “Morning Bercerita”. A qualitative descriptive approach was used through participatory observation and unstructured interviews with classroom teachers during the pre-research period of 12 January–13 April 2026. The preliminary findings identified three early indications: (1) children showed more active thinking—predicting, comparing, and explaining reasons—during dialogic storytelling compared with instructional activities; (2) repeated actions and cause–effect relationships within story plots become contexts that triggered children's reasoning; and (3) storytelling in this school functions as a distinctive activity setting due to its routine, interactive, and media-rich implementation. These preliminary indications affirm storytelling as a promising natural context for the emergence of mathematical thinking and provide the conceptual and methodological grounding for a subsequent case study to be conducted in July–August 2026.]]>
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