Opinions please, is this typical development at age 5

[ForTonightGodisaDJ]

A reception class is given a task of cutting the letters of the alphabet out of coloured card that someone has drawn on with pencil. The letters are quite large and in capitals. Each child is assigned say, 3 or 4 letters to cut out. A child is happy with this, neatly and accurately cutting out the letters until they get to a letter like O. They start by cutting around the outside no problem but then panic and don't know how to get the inside out. It could be that they fear creasing the paper by snipping through the middle, or hurting themselves. In the end they don't seem to know what to do and cut across the O to get to the middle bit, thereby the O is no longer joined and has a slit in it. Is this fairly normal for a 5 year old or is it noteworthy?

Sounds normal. Why?

Sounds normal to me. We were cutting out O's for MOM yesterday with 6-8 year olds and generally they didn't know how to get to the middle bit (card not paper so hard for fold).
Cutting through the letter to get to it seems sensible but not significantly above their problem solving age

Sounds normal to me.

That's normal.

Noteworthy would be:

Unable to cut around the letters at all
Unable to use scissors
Refusal to do the task
Crying / meltdown because they "broke" the 0 by cutting through it

Sounds very normal to me.

Even some adults wouldn't be sure how to do this.

Totally normal.

Neatly and accurately sounds particularly good for 5 if anything.

To be honest, and I'm not saying this to be snarky, the only thing that doesn't sound normal is the implication that an adult is worrying about it.

Very normal.

"Panicking" is abnormal if that's what you mean?

Problem solving by cutting through the letter is great, as is following instructions and neatly and accurately cutting round the letters. Lots of 4 and 5 year olds aren't able to do that and wouldn't be interested in focussing on a task like this for an extended time.

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me.
Ideally the child would have asked an adult for help with that problem but sometimes the adults are busy and I understand why they may be wanted to crack on.

Agreed!

As a former reception teacher I'd be just content the child could use the scissors to be honest.

If they were cutting the letters out neatly I'd be seriously impressed.

It seems like a reasonable solution to a problem they perceived! What worries me more is the fact that they were given this as a task to do in class, not exactly cutting edge learning (sorry), and I would find it hard to justify this as an activity designed to improve cutting skills, one letter maybe, but not three or four.

This is something that happened to me when I was 5 and it always stayed with me as one of the teachers sighed and made it known that I shouldn't have done that :( I often think back from time to time and wonder if I was slow for this age. I have problems concentrating and am pretty sure I have ADD. It doesn't really bother me so I've never taken the trouble to get tested, yet.