Teachers View: Miriam MulKerrin, assistant principal of St Colmcille's, Knocklyon, will be helping to supervise 180 children as they take their First Communion over the next couple of Sundays.
"I'd like to say the children are excited about the Lord Jesus, but I think for many children, not necessarily those in my school, it is as much a cultural rite of passage," she says.
Getting the children to concentrate can be difficult because, for some of them, being quiet and still in a church is a new experience, say teachers.
"If schools are responsible for the death of Irish, you could also say that schools are responsible for the death of religion. As with the Irish language, it is hard for schools to teach children about religion when the message is not being backed up by society and the home," says Mulkerrin. "I'm speaking generally, not about St Colmcille's. At our school, we have made an effort to bring the parents in over the years and let them take an actual part in the ceremony."
The 93 children of St Attracta's Junior School, Ballinteer, Co Dublin, are so excited about the new clothes, the money and the family outings that it is difficult to keep them focused on the spiritual, says teacher Eithne Roycroft.
"It's exceptionally difficult because we are living in an era where a lot of children have not been to Mass on a regular basis," she says.
"Many have no sense of the specialness and holiness of a church. The first thing we have to teach them is that you don't talk or shout or laugh in a church as you would on the playground. For many children the concept of silence is alien to them, really."
Jacqui O'Brien has taught in primary schools in rural, disadvantaged urban and suburban middle-class settings and reckons children are the same everywhere. "It's a rite of passage where the children say we are not babies any more, we are big children now," she says.
Currently teaching at Baldoyle Boys National School, O'Brien sees First Communion as a way of helping children to recognise the presence of Jesus in their lives, and to learn that they are connected through Jesus to family and friends.
"The Alive-O programme is all done in a child's language and through a child's eyes," she says. "The children accept it at face value at this age; there is a lovely innocence about them."
Teachers across the State speak of a trend towards including non-Catholic children in First Communion ceremonies, even to the extent of receiving blessings at the altar. Non-Catholic children attending Catholic schools, have the option of being taken out of class during religious instruction by their parents, although in practice this is inconvenient. Usually, non-Catholic children remain in class and colour or read during the sacramental preparations, although some of these children are attracted to participate in order to be like their friends.
At the interdenominational gaelscoil in Wicklow Town, all children of whatever belief engage in the First Holy Communion ceremony. They wear white albs, instead of the traditional outfits. At other schools, Muslim children sing in choirs during the ceremony - with their parents' permission. This last point is important, says Ali Salim, education spokesman with the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland in Clonskeagh. He does not want to see Muslim children pressured into participating in First Communion ceremonies merely out of a desire to be like their friends.