I had a lesson focused on corn snake terrarium design ready, based on personal experience having had owned this pet in captivity as a child, as well as natural habitat observations of this species in the wild locally in Martin County, Florida (I have a resident adult corn snake in my parents' backyard).
I started the lesson asking what Ben did and received for his Birthday expecting to hear about the new pet snake, but he told me about many nonliving gifts including a huge encyclopedia of reptiles he had received and then we had planned to look at and critique this book on the coming Friday. At that point Ben needed to get water so I texted his mom to find that the corn snake will appear in a couple of weeks after moving, so I did not (thank goodness!) mess up the surprise. Instead, we focused our discussion on current terrarium design of Ben's crested gecko Red. His design (as seen in photo) is well thought out and appropriate for Red, and the only change I would recommend is to add live vines/pothos etc with good water source to replace the fake plants, to clean the air a bit.
There is a living pothos vine I brought from my personal collection that is in the Science room terrarium that Ben should please take home for Red... it's important to cut the end of the stem of the vine, then put the fresh cut stem in very moist soil OR directly in water bowl. It should flourish in his well maintained tank and can grow over ten feet long.
We also talked a bit more about our favorite snakes including the Malagasy Ground Boa (Acrantophis madagascariensis) that lives in Lokobe National Park where I volunteer each year in Madagascar. This Boa does not get very big, and is possibly the most docile, friendly snake on Earth. People in Mada are very scared of snakes, but no one is afraid of this species. It is slow and even a wild one will respond passively to being picked up, perhaps enjoying human body heat.