Table with recent post

Hello everyone,

I am kind of new in php, but I have spent much time in blogging (also with wordpress) but I have a problem over the last 2 days that I can find out a solution.

What I want is to have some kind of table shown at the mainbar just under the last post shown, and in every cell of the table I want somehow to display the picture(thumbnail) and 1-2 lines of the latest 4-5 posts (some kind of preview) so that the readers may click on the preview and open the whole post like normal.

Could anyone please have any idea?

Thanks a lot in advanced,
Chris