Formatting date – PHP/CSS Code-Question

Hello,

i want to format the date something like this (it doesn’t work because i’m not good in PHP).

<?php the_date(‘d’, ‘<p class=”date”><span>’, ‘</span></p>’); ?>
<?php the_date(‘M Y’, ‘<p class=”date”>’, ‘</p>’); ?>

1st line is day with span-tag
2nd line is month and year without span-tag

I want to make the Day-Number bigger via CSS, so i have to separate the day to make a SPAN around it. The PHP might not be correctly.

An idea how it’s combined correctly?

Thank you!