The Value Logic, Functional Construction, and Practical Pathways of Minnan Nursery Rhyme Musical Theater in Cultivating Preschool Children's Sense of the Chinese National Community

Abstract

Cultivating a sense of the Chinese national community constitutes a core issue in preschool children's ethnic unity education in the new era. However, an inherent challenge arises between the abstract ideological attributes of this concept and the concrete cognitive modes characteristic of young learners. Adopting embodied cognition theory as an analytical framework, this study proposes that fostering preschool children's sense of the Chinese national community is fundamentally a process of embodied identity construction, requiring the transformation from abstract concepts to internalized identification through concrete, perceptible cultural practices and physical co-presence. Minnan culture, as a vivid exemplar of the pattern of unity in diversity within the Chinese nation, provides tangible and perceptible ontological content for consciousness cultivation. Minnan nursery rhyme musical theater, with the richness and unity of its multimodal artistic language, constructs an immersive embodied aesthetic field. Through sonic narration, Minnan nursery rhymes sublimate local stories into the Chinese spirit, achieving a meaning transition from local experience to national identity. On this basis, the study constructs a progressive cultivation mechanism comprising shared immersion and group-based embodiment. The shared immersion stage employs joint learning and singing of Minnan nursery rhymes to achieve coordinated bodily action and emotional resonance, laying the cognitive and emotional foundation of shared belonging. The group-based embodiment stage proceeds through four phases—preparation, practice, rehearsal, and performance—realizing the embodied reproduction of community symbols and the deepening of cultural identity through homemade musical instruments, collaborative style creation, and mutual appreciation of performances. This mechanism operates on the logic of interaction ritual chain theory, transforming abstract symbols into embodied practices that preschool children can operationalize, experience, and internalize, thereby providing a theoretical reference and practical pathway for cultivating a sense of the Chinese national community in ethnic regions.