Elmo and friends stop by Ramstein

The anticipation in the Ramstein Youth Center gym ran high as the song that has captured audiences for more than 40 years began to play.

On the edge of their seats with their eyes open wide, children waited anxiously to sing and dance with characters from “Sesame Street” who were on Ramstein Saturday.

The “Sesame Street”/United Service Organizations Experience for Military Families is a free traveling USO tour exclusively for military families based on Sesame Workshop’s award-winning Talk, Listen, Connect initiative.

The show made its debut in July 2008 to help families cope with the challenges of deployment and homecomings.

“This year, we changed the story line and introduced a new character, Katie,” said Lonnie Cooper, USO tour manager. “Katie is a military child relocating to a new home.”

The 25-minute, high-energy show follows Katie as she opens up about her fears and excitement of moving to a new base.

With the help of Elmo and other “Sesame Street” pals, Katie finds ways to deal with change and gets ideas on how to make new friends while keeping in touch with her old ones.

“This part of military life is not unusual,” Cooper said. “Everyone goes through it, which makes this show so appealing to all military children.”

Children aren’t the only ones who benefitted from the show.

“The show is geared toward children,” said Mark Cobb, Vogelweh Youth Programs director. “It also gives parents an idea on what to talk about and how to help their children cope with a PCS.”

Cobb added that, on average, military children attend four schools before graduating.

“For all military families, relocating is a common topic at the dinner table,” he said. “Hopefully this show helps our military parents out during their own time of relocating.”

Two shows were provided to families at the Ramstein Youth Center gym Saturday, reaching more than 700 children.

“Overall the show was a great success,” Cobb said. “As always, the ‘Sesame Street’/ USO Experience for Military Families performers gave a quality show, and you could see it on all the 700 smiling faces.”

The production kicked off in April and is scheduled to run until November, visiting 51 military installations all over the world.

Since the tour’s inception four years ago, the “Sesame Street”/USO Experience for Military Families has logged more than 61,200 miles to 90 bases in 33 different states and nine countries.

The tour has also performed 315 shows for more than 192,600 service members and their families.