Anyone is welcome to take weapons from the beginning. Aikido is a very weapons-oriented martial art and it is important to move to higher levels of understanding Aikido. I use the weapons now mainly as tools, tools for understanding Aikido because I think that as a weapon you won't use these anymore. People use guns, among other things. Of all the weapons we use the tanto is more like a modern weapon of choice.
People use knives and smaller-type weapons as a whole.
I think that weapons training is good, it gives you a different, better understanding of techniques. So you would say you incorporate weapons into regular training instead of a weapons class. It's good to have weapons class separately, but as technique itself is weapons oriented technique it should be one in the same. What kind of instructions do you give to your senior students. We've instituted an instructors class for quite a few years and we are emphasizing going back to basics and trying to discuss problems people have had in teaching.