It was raining too hard to work in the paddocks, so Suzy opened the Word Workshop in the hay shed.

"Today we build words," she said, laying out a pile of wooden blocks. Each block had a word part painted on it.

Little Thunder picked up two blocks. "Barn and yard. If I push them together... barnyard!"

"That's a compound word," said Suzy. "Two words that join to make a new one."

Spike quickly found more. "Sheep and dog make sheepdog. Wind and mill make windmill. Hay and stack make haystack!"

Then Suzy brought out a different set of blocks. "These are prefixes and suffixes. A prefix goes at the front of a word. A suffix goes at the end."

She held up the word fence. "Add un- and -ed and what do you get?"

"Unfenced!" said Little Thunder. "A paddock with no fence around it."

Canberra the cow wandered in, shaking off the rain. "What about re-? That means again."

"Replant," said Spike. "Like when we replanted the gum trees after the dry summer."

Little Thunder grabbed a suffix block. "Careful plus -ly is carefully. Help plus -ful is helpful. And kelpie plus -s is kelpies!"

Suzy laughed. "Now let's try real farm words. A drover moves cattle long distances. A paddock is a fenced field. A muster is when we gather the herd together."

By the time the rain stopped, the hay shed wall was covered with new words.

"I've learned more words today than ever," said Little Thunder. "That's unbelievable!"

"Un, believe, able," said Spike. "You built another one."